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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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Supremacy of Law 



"-THE LAW OF THE LORD IS PERFECT, CONVERTING 
THE soul:' 




'.. BY 



JOHN P. NEWMAN, D.D., LL.D., 



A Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church 




NEW YORK: HUNT ^ EA TON 

CINCINNATI: CRANSTON df STOWE 

1890 






Copyright, 1890, by 

HUNT & EATON, 

New York. 



TO 



MY FRIEND, 



LELAND STANFORD, 



STATESMAN 



AND 



PHILANTHROPIST. 



CONTENTS. 



I. PAGE 

Author of Law 5 

TL 
Promulgation of Law 41 



III. 
Mission of Law 15 



ly. 

Law of Reverence , 



Y. 
Law of Rest 114 

YI. 
Law of Home 133 

YII 
Rights of Life 155 

Yin. 
Rights of Property 117 



IX. 
Rights of Fame 200 



X. 
Law of Purity 221 



SUPREMACY OF LAW. 



A 



I. 

THE AUTHOR OF LA^W. 

S citizens of the United States we owe alle- 
giance to the government under which we live, 
without regard to the personal character of him who, 
by the suffrages of the people, may be the chief ruler 
of our nation. While at all times it is desirable that our 
president should be pure, wise, and jast, and be revered 
for his conscientiousness, fidelity, and impartiality, 
yet, these are the attributes of tlie man and are inci- 
dental to the government of which he is the honored 
head. Our chief executive is not the author of our laws. 
The government is greater than the administration. 
Our prime concern is with the duties and rights 
which flow out of the Constitution to which we owe 
fealty. Presidents die, the Constitution is immortal. 
As creatures we owe allegiance to our Creator, 
under whose government we were created. He is 
greater than his government, since he is both Author 



6 Supremacy of Law. 

and Administrator of his law. His is essentially a 
personal government, conservative of his character 
and his rights. His right to reign is from his right 
of possession. Our chief interest is less in the genius 
of his government than in the personality of the 
Governor : who he is, what his character is, what are 
the attributes of his person, why he should claim our 
allegiance, demand our unfaltering devotion and place 
our manifold life, with all its powers, under obligation 
to his service and declarative of his glory. 

By this manifest difference the question of loyalty 
is relegated from the realm of ordinary law to a higher 
law, higher considerations, higher responsibilities, to a 
Supreme Person, Maker of all things. Sovereign of all 
worlds. Could it be shown that we are ignorant of 
his person, that his character is unworthy of our re- 
gard, that his claims are unjust, that his administra- 
tion is partial, then, surely, we would be justified in 
withholding our recognition of his claim to rule over 
us and of our duty to worship him. Inspired by the 
surest dictates of reason and by the honorable jeal- 
ousy of our rights we may ask with those of old : 
" What is the Almighty, that we should serve him ? 
And what profit should we have if we pray unto him ? " 
If he is as represented by some theological authors 
he can never win our hearts nor receive our devotions ; 



The Author of Law. 7 

for we are bound to contemplate him with the 
faculties with which we are endowed, and find in our 
natures a correspondence to the nature of him who 
claims to be our Creator, and out of which correspond- 
ence loyalty must spring and allegiance must flow. 

Where shall we go for the true portraiture of God, 
the Father of us all ? Shall we go to Abraham, or 
Moses, or Isaiah ? Shall we turn to Peter, James, or 
•John ? Is St. Paul equal to the task ? Could we 
trust an angel ? Is it not forever true that only the 
Infinite can portray the Infinite ? God must speak for 
himself. Has he spoken ? Where shall we find his 
portraiture of himself? Where else but in his law, 
revealed to man ? Is it not in that Book we call di- 
vine ? It is in this higher sense that we cannot trust 
prophet or apostle, who, unaided by revelation, how- 
ever illustrious he may be, is no more competent 
to the task than the distinguished philosophers of 
other times and of other nations. At all times we 
should distinguish between man's thoughts of God 
and God's thoughts of himself. It is not enough for 
our thought and love to say that " The Almighty One 
has hung out upon the world a picture of himself." 
Those silent lips must speak in words we can 
understand, to command our intelligence, excite our 
adoration, and awaken our affections. 



8 Supremacy of Law. 

It is an old saying, and true as old, that " The gods of 
men are the men themselves." The tendency has ever 
been to reduce divinity to humanity, and not elevate 
humanity to divinity. There are some representations 
of the Almighty in the Bible, unauthorized, which are 
absolutely shocking to all that is divine in justice, in 
mercy, and in love. Acts are ascribed to him which 
he never performed ; expressions are attributed to 
him which he never uttered ; dispositions are declared 
of him which he never possessed. It is a mistake to 
suppose that he is a Jewish God, exclusive to that na- 
tionality ; it is also an error that he is the God of the 
Christians, regardless of their theological deductions 
and sectarian aspirations. 

He chose the Hebrews to be the messengers of his 
will to mankind, and he is their God in this truer and 
better sense ; and he is the Christians' God, when their 
interpretations of his government, their manifesta- 
tions of his spirit, their declarations of his character 
are in harmony with the teachings of Jesus Christ. 

How the ages have misunderstood our God, his 
glorious personality, his transcendent character ! He 
has been misconceived, misinterpreted, misrepre- 
sented. Of old he said : " Thou thoughtest that I 
was altogether such an one as thyself, but I will re- 
prove thee and set them in order before thine eyes." 



The Author of Law. 9 

All through his word he is constantly correcting the 
misrepresentations of himself. Those to whom his 
revelations were made failed at times to apprehend 
him in his true power and glory. He is, therefore, 
not to be judged by the lives of the old patriarchs, by 
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, by Moses, David, and Sol- 
omon, but by the clearer and sterner liglit of his glo- 
rious character as revealed, of which we catch glimpses 
ever and anon. As the heavens are above the earth 
he is higher than these men. We are to look upon 
them on the lowlands of humanity ; we are to con- 
template him on the highlands of divinity. We are 
not to judge of liis person and character from what 
they say of him, but rather from what he says of him- 
self. Behold the contrast ! What a world of differ- 
ence ! He said to those to whom he had revealed him- 
self : '^ My thoughts are not as your thoughts ; neither 
are your ways my ways, saith the Lord." Great as 
was Job in the clearness of his intellect and the splen- 
dor of his diction, who prided himself on his friend- 
ship witli the Almighty, who claimed special honor 
from his countrymen and age because of his pros- 
perity and the character he displayed, yet he knew 
not the Almighty until God revealed himself unto 
him in person. Then said the illustrious sufferer of the 
land of Uz : '' I have heard of thee by the hearing of 



10 Supremacy of Law. 

the ear ; but now mine eye seetli thee. Wherefore I 
abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." 

It is one of the amazing facts in New Testament 
liistory that the divine Son of the Highest was not 
understood in the days of his flesh, even by those 
nearest to him. His bosom friends failed to appre- 
ciate the spirit of his mission, the significance of his 
character, and the spirituality of his teachings. Had 
they been left wholly to themselves what a distorted 
portraiture they would have given history of the 
Prophet of ISTazareth ! Such was their mental obli- 
quity and failure of understanding that he declared 
unto them : " I have yet many things to say unto you, 
but ye cannot bear them now." We know Christ 
rather from what lie said of himself than from what 
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John say of him. His 
words, his works, his acts are the true exponents of 
himself, rather than the unaided conceptions of his 
twelve apostles. 

This misconception of the Almighty runs through 
all time. It is no less true of our own day than 
of any other age in all the past. Men formulate their 
creeds and palm them upon the world as divine 
thoughts ; they portray Jehovah and demand that all 
men shall receive their representations of him as true 
and binding; they interpret his government and 



The Author of Law. 11 

announce tlieir interpretations as authoritative and 
inspired ; tliey couple his name with their feeble 
thoughts, assert them in their feeble words, and then 
demand that all men shall believe or be damned. 
They proclaim, •' Thus saith the Lord," when the 
Lord has not spoken. From all such we turn away 
and ascend to the Lord God himself. 

Agnostics quiet themselves by saying that the Al- 
mighty is unknowable and unthinkable, and, there- 
fore, unrevealable. He is neither. What a world of 
difierence there is between comprehension and appre- 
hension ! We comprehend nothing ; we apprehend 
much. To comprehend is to hold, to contain ; to ap- 
prehend is to touch, to take hold of. We reason from 
the known to the unknown ; an old method, true as 
venerable. Thus reasoned Leverrier when he con- 
cluded that the perturbations in the orbit of the planet 
Uranus were caused by the presence of an unknown 
planet. Both in nature and in Providence there are 
suggestions of the Infinite One, and logic justifies us 
in our rational inferences. We argue from the seen 
to the unseen, from Cicero's oration to the orator in 
the forum. The orator has vanished from the vision 
of the world, the forum is in ruins, the Roman audi- 
tory no longer exists, but the oration is with us. This 
universe is God's oration, whose voice whispers in the 



12 Supremacy of Law. 

zephyr and thunders in the blizzard. The invisibility 
of the divine Orator does not suppose his absence or 
his non-existence ; he lives for evermore. From hu- 
man personality we ascend to the divine Person^ 
whose purity, goodness, and power are akin to our 
own, but differ in measure. In him they are infinite. 

He comes to our apprehension by designations, at- 
tributes, and a portraiture of himself. How signifi- 
cant are the twelve appellations whereby he has pro- 
claimed himself to man — the Self-Existent One, " I am 
that I am ; " the Adorable One, worthy of all adora- 
tion ; the Merciful One, tender and compassionate ; 
the Gracious One, goodness himself ; the Patient One, 
long-suffering, not easily provoked ; the Bountiful 
One, Giver of every good and perfect gift, abound- 
ing in goodness ; the True One, Flower of Truth, 
possessing all knowledge, without deception ; the Pre- 
server of mercy, keeping mercy for thousands of 
generations ; the Bearer of our sins, the Redeemer, 
" forgiving iniquity, and transgression, and sin ;" the 
Righteous Judge, of impartial justice, who will not 
" clear the guilty ; " the Almighty One, having all 
power " in heaven and in earth ; " the Jealous One, 
" for I am a jealous God." 

His attributes are his possessions, the sublime facts 
of his divine personality, conveying to the human 



The Author of Law. 13 

mind impressions of the Infinite, elevating and en- 
trancing. They transcend our comprehension and 
humble us by their infinitude ; yet they reveal to our 
imagination the august character of him who stoops 
to solicit our love and to invite our companionship. 
" From everlasting to everlasting thou art God " is 
beyond all our conceptions ; yet he would not be 
worthy of our adoration and love were he not eternal. 
We can only approach the thought. All our estimates 
of his duration are less than the dust of the balance. 
Standing by the chasm of Niagara we look into the 
awful rush of waters and recall the geological fact that 
thirty-seven thousand years ago there was no Niagara. 
Steaming out of the mouth of the Mississippi we are 
reminded by the scientists that one hundred thousand 
years ago no delta existed there. Behold the work 
of the ages ! A year goes by and our earth has made 
the circuit of the sun ; but, moving in his larger orbit, 
Neptune requires one hundred and sixty -four of our 
3^ears to complete his circuit, and has made but thirty- 
five such revolutions since Adam lived in Eden. 
The comet of 1680, when last in our heavens prior to 
that year, looked down upon our earth which was 
then " without form and void ; " and when it shall re- 
turn to look upon us again what shall be the condi- 
tion of the planet whereon we dwell ? Yet, what are 



14 Supremacy of Law. 

these vasr periods compared to thine eternity, O God ! 
Thy years shall not fail. 

God is all-powerful. There is power in the sun, 
power in the wind, power in the deep ; but when 
combined these are as nothing compared to liim whose 
name is ELOHIM. And how shall we rise to the 
lofty conception of his omnipotence ! What must have 
been the impulse imparted to the sun, to cause that 
glorious luminary to move at the rate of three thou- 
sand miles a minute ! And to the milky way, with 
its eighteen millions of brilliant suns, to revolve at 
the rate of the same average speed ! He upholdeth 
" all things by the word of his power." He is the 
Eternal Power. Whatever is, whether animate or inan- 
imate, in all the vast realm of nature, is the work of 
his hands. All force, whether mechanical, chemical, 
electric, magnetic, or spiritual, is God in action. His 
power throbs in the light, pulsates in life, operates in 
matter, expands in mind, develops in purity. Gravi- 
tation is God. 

How vast the sphere of his presence ! The theater 
of his action is boundless space, and therein he dis- 
plays the infinitude of his being. We form only a 
faint idea of space. We judge of space by the bodies 
that are therein. Our ideas are limited by what we 
see. Science teaches us that the celestial sphere is 



The Author of Law. 15 

indefinitely expanded space. What we call the azure 
sky is but the hue of our atmosphere, and it seems 
round because the air is the medium of our vision. Be- 
yond what seems to be the limit of our vision there is 
boundless space. Had we the power of flight, and 
should we ascend to the frontiers of the universe, 
there still would be infinite space beyond. At two 
hundred and forty thousand miles we would reach our 
moon ; at four hundred times more remote we would 
stand in the sun ; at eleven thousand times more dis- 
tant we would be a visitant in Neptune ; and, were 
we to continue our journey to the comet of 1680, one 
hundred and eighty thousand times further away than 
our moon, we would be no nearer our journey's end. 
One of old sang of the " sweet influences of 
Pleiades;" but so far away is that cluster of brilliants 
that were they blotted from existence this moment 
they would still blaze away on the neck of Taurus 
for more than seven hundred years ere the last ray 
faded from the vision of man. How many miles does 
light travel in a second ? How many seconds are there 
in seven hundred years? How far are the Pleiades 
from us? No astronomer . imagines that he has seen 
the verge of the universe ; yet in all this vast creation 
is the " Adorable One." " "Whither shall I go from 
thy Spirit ? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence ? 



16 Supremacy of Law. 

If I ascend up into heaven thou art there ; if I make 
my bed in hell, behold thou art there. If I take the 
wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts 
of tlie sea, even there shall thy hand lead me and thy 
right hand shall hold me." 

How sublime may be our contemplations of his 
boundless intelligence ! He is the Infinite Knower 
and the Infinite Worker. " In whom are hid all the 
treasures of wisdom and knowledge." By his wis- 
dom countless millions of worlds balance each other 
Mathout falling, wliirl through their orbits without 
collision, and perform their revolutions without the 
deviation of the hundredth part of a minute in a thou- 
sand years. Who would be songless in the presence 
of such a Being ? By his wisdom was the sun placed 
in the center of our system, from which light, heat, 
life, and beauty are distributed in due proportions to 
all worlds that roll round that celestial center ; where- 
by night succeeds the day and day the night for the 
comfort of man and beast ; and whereby do the sea- 
sons come and go, so that " seed-time and harvest 
. . . summer and winter," fail not to man. 

And he comes within the finite limits of our im- 
agination by the portraiture he has drawn of himself 
in that law which he has revealed to mankind : 
"" And God spake all these words, saying, I am the 



The Author of Law. 17 

Lord thy God . . . Thou shalt have no other gods be- 
fore me. Thoii shalt not make unto thee any graven 
image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven 
above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the 
water under the earth." 

" Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor 
serve them: for I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous 
God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the 
children unto the third and fourth generation of 
them that hate me ; and showing mercy unto thou- 
sands of them that love me and keep my command- 
ments." 

" And the Lord descended in the cloud and stood 
with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord. 
And the Lord passed by before him and proclaimed, 
The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, long- 
suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keep- 
ing mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and trans- 
gression and sin, and that will by no means clear the 
guilty ; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the 
children, and upon the children's children, unto the 
third and to the fourth generation." 

What a glorious picture is this of our Father in 
heaven ! How it commends itself to our understand- 
ing! What a flood of light it lets into the soul ! What 
newer, richer, grander thoughts we have of him! 



18 Supremacy of Law. 

In this glorious description three points are misun- 
derstood, and therefore demand explanation. He 
says : " I am a jealous God." In his learned book 
on the Study of Words. Dean Trench has given us a 
chapter on the " mutation of language," showing how 
a word may change its meaning through the lapse of 
years. Perhaps no w^ord in our language has been more 
abused than the word " jealous." In the Scriptures 
it has a double significance. Primarily it implies, " I 
am sensitive of my rights and honor." And who is 
not? He who is indifferent to his rights and honor is 
unworthy of manhood ; for underlying this sensitive- 
ness is the appreciation of high-born character, out of 
which come those forces that make men good, power- 
ful, and dignified. This is the meaning of Elijah, 
when he said : ''I have been very jealous for the Lord 
God of hosts" — that is, " I have been very sensitive as 
to thine honor ; I have proclaimed thy majesty and 
declared thy law on the plains of Esdraelon, on the 
summit of Gilboa, and on the heights of Mount Car- 
mel ; I have risked every thing because I knew that 
thou hadst thy rights and honor, and that I was set 
for their defense." 

St. Paul uses the term in another signification, 
implying a solicitude and deep concern for the wel- 
fare of others : '' I am jealous over you with godly 



The Author of Law. 19 

jealousy " — that is, " I am deeply solicitous for your 
happiness ; my concern is profound.*" It is in this 
endearing sense, as if the Almighty had said, " I can- 
not allow my creatures to place themselves in a posi- 
tion wherein I cannot love and bless them." 

Could we ask more of the Infinite Father than to 
be solicitous for his children, that they may not place 
themselves in the position of idolaters and thereby 
forfeit his gracious blessing ? 

As a patriot, true and ardent, might say : " I can- 
not allow my country to be placed in a position, by a 
false administration, by the enactment of unrighteous 
laws, by the adoption of a foreign policy, whereby it 
would be excluded from the favor of Jehovah and the 
prosperity which springs from its principles and his- 
tory." And so a true husband would say : " I cannot 
permit my wife to place herself in such a state wherein 
I cannot love and cherish her." No true man is indif- 
ferent to the welfare of the woman he has wedded, 
nor would he expose her love and person to compan- 
ionship fraught with temptations and dangers ; to do 
so would prove his unworthiness of husbandry and of 
honorable manhood. A husband is the eternal guard- 
ian of the wife of his bosom. He is to protect her 
to the last degree ; to preserve her honor he is to 
sacrifice every thing, even life itself. In this loftier 



20 Supremacy of Law. 

sense Jehovah says : " I am a jealous God ; do not 
worship idols, and thereby place yourselves beyond 
the limitations of ray love and benedictions." 

Tliere is another declaration in this ancient law 
capable of an explanation reflective of a better and 
truer view of our Sovereio;n Creator : " Visiting: the 
iniquity of the fathers upon tlie children unto the 
third and fourth generation." The old interpretation 
is botli false and cruel, that " the Lord of heaven holds 
the children responsible for the sins of their parents." 
How monstrous and blaspliemous this conception of the 
Creator ! To vindicate himself against such a degrad- 
ing cliarge he has left on record this answer : " The 
fathers shall not be put to death for the children, 
neither shall the children be put to death for the 
fathers : every man shall be put to death for his own 
sin." What, then, is the meaning of this extraordi- 
nary expression ? The term " iniquity " is not equiva- 
lent of punishment. He does not say that he visits 
the punishments due the fathers on the children to 
the third and fourth generation, but simply declares a 
great truth, brought out distinctly by the most emi- 
nent scientists of our day, that the law of transmission 
is a fiict, that the past is handed down, that virtuous 
and vicious tendencies are transmitted from generation 
to generation. The whole history of the world is in 



The Author of Law. 21 

proof of this ; every man is a living illustration of a 
fact which cannot be denied. Our pliysical, intel- 
lectual and moral characteristics are an inheritance. 
Men are born liars, thieves, murderers, as others are 
born truth-loving, the soul of honor, and tender of 
the life of every living thing. Gibbs, the pirate, was 
a pirate from his mother's womb ; the elder Booth, 
the famous tragedian, who could personate murder 
on the stage with such apparent actuality that his 
auditors cried, " Murder, murder ! " yet, from his 
birth to his death, was tender of every thing that 
had life. It is one of the proverbs in all literature 
that men are born poets, orators, warriors. Julius 
Caesar, Mark Antony, Columbus, Yoltaire, and David 
Hume represent this great law of transmission, whose 
characteristics were inherited, and were as conspicu- 
ous in childhood as in their riper years. In these 
words of his law God only proclaims what he had 
already written on the whole order and constitution of 
nature. Herein he applies this law, in its operations, 
to the transmission of idolatrous tendencies to the 
third and fourth generation. The " third and fourth " 
may here be proverbial, as the terms, " seventh " and 
" tenth " are proverbial ; and it is a significant and 
historical fact that, in the history of the Jews, it 
required three or four generations for tlie taint of 



22 Supremacy of Law. 

idolatry to run its course and become extinct. The 
Hebrew captives, on their return from Babylon, were 
no longer idolaters. Whatever their offense may have 
been, charged against them prior to their exile, the 
generation wlio came from the banks of the Tigris 
and of the Euphrates, and who were of the third and 
fourth generations, were free from the sin which led 
to the captivity of their ancestors. Here, then, is 
simply a declaration of the operation of a law which 
we recoo-nize in the doo; that caresses us, in the horse 
which carries us, in the flowers that cheer us, in almost 
every thing that lives. We have seen the son inherit 
the evil tendencies of his father, and have witnessed 
the results of a vicious, prodigal life of a father 
through succeeding generations. If fault is found 
with the teachings of the Bible in this regard, fault 
must be found with the order of nature. And it is 
as remarkable as true that what can be affirmed of 
individuals may be of nations, for this law of transmis- 
sion binds national life as it does the life of individu- 
ality. What we are to-day we are under the operation 
of this fearful law, and what American generations 
may be, through unnumbered centuries, will be under 
the operation of this same marvelous law of heritage. 
It is in this light that when Jehovah speaks of visiting 
the iniquities of the fathers upon the children to the 



The Author of Law. 23 

third and fourth generations he speaks of the taint of 
idolatry, and utters a fact for which all history stands 
in proof. 

There is a third point in this wonderful picture 
worthy a moment's consideration — God declares him- 
self a discriminating judge, " that will by no means 
clear the guilty." And who would have him clear 
the guilty? Out of this question grows the deeper 
one, Shall we have government or no government ? 
A government without justice is unworthy the name 
thereof. Law that can be infracted with impunity, 
where no penalties are executed for the violation 
thereof, is unworthy the honorable designation of law. 
If the right to punish inheres in the family and in 
organized society, why may we not assume that it is 
in accord with the government of the Infinite Sove- 
reign of the universe ? A system of pains and penal- 
ties is every-where prevalent. We may make a 
distinction between penalties and consequences, yet 
the issue is the same — pain attends transgression of 
law. The whole universe moves in orderly proces- 
sion. The uniformities of nature delare that order is 
the first law of heaven. Man is no exception to this 
rule of administration. He is a living, walking code 
of law, and, whatever his religious faith or his pur- 
pose, lie suffers if he sins. There is more beneficence 



24 Supremacy of Law. 

in the prohibitions of law than in the permissions 
and mandates. Doubtless the Almighty had a choice, 
in the creation of man, whether liis noble creature 
should be a machine, whose every act sliould be auto- 
matic and subject to another's touch, or whether he 
should be dignified with the sovereignty of liberty, 
to stand or fall for himself, to obey or disobey, to 
live in harmony or in dissonance with his Creator. 
Man's crown of glory is liberty. Liberty means free 
will, free will means government, government means 
law, law implies penalty, penalty implies pain. The 
Almighty could have been simply our Creator, and 
been indifferent to our acts and the results of our 
actions ; but in the boundlessness of his beneficence 
he has placed us under the rule of justice, and in 
keeping thereof there is great reward. 

Such a beneficent Being naturally claims two things 
of his creatures : the right of exclusion and the right 
of possession. " Thou shalt have no other gods be- 
fore me." He does not deny the pretended existence 
of other gods ; he knew that in every age and country 
on the face of all the earth idolatry existed and idol 
gods were worshij)ed. But he claims for himself 
not only the preference, but absolute exclusion from 
others. " Before me " — that is, in my presence. Where 
is his presence ? Wherever he is. And where is he ? 



The Author of Law. 25 

He is omnipresent. Find any point in illimitable 
space where he is not, and there thou mayest rear 
thine idol altar, pour forth libations of gratitude, sing 
anthems of praise to the dumb idol ; but where in all 
space canst thou go and not find the Almighty ? 

"Whither shall I go from thy Spirit ? or whither 
shall I flee from thy presence ? " 

With tliis exclusion from all other gods from his 
omnipresence there comes the companion thought, 
his right of possession : ^' But thou shalt have me." 
If we are not to have other gods in his presence, then 
by every principle of logic we are to have him. " I am 
the Lord thy God, and thou shalt have me." How ? 
As the patriot has his country which is by birth or 
naturalization, the land he calls his own, wherein are 
the institutions in which he takes honest pride, and 
the principles for which he is willing to die ; that is 
his country, so man is to have his God. As the 
woman has her husband, chosen from out all the sons 
of men, to whom she surrenders her all, a heart for a. 
heart, a life for a life, a soul for a soul, and in whom 
she has placed implicit confidence, in the one who led 
her to the bridal altar and swore to be true to her in 
good report and evil report, " for better, for worse^ 
for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, till 
death us do part," to the exclusion of all other men^ 



26 Supremacy OF Law. 

so is she to have her God, to the exclusion of all other 
divinities. '^Thou shalt have me." 

There is no sadder page in the history of the world 
than the decadence of the faith and practice of man- 
kind touching this great truth. Monotheism was the 
original faith of mankind. It is a crime against his- 
tory to assert that the fetich was the original form of 
idolatry, and that the race has come up from the basest 
barbarism, and has at length merged into a monothe- 
istic faith. Men who assert this but flaunt their ig- 
norance before an intelligent world, especially their 
ignorance of Oriental religions. If there be any thing 
that comes to us with the accuracy of history it is 
that the farther we go backward to the beginning of 
time and the creation of our race, the most ancient 
altars that can be found bore the sublime inscription, 
" There is one God." 

It is not true that idolatry antedates monotheism and 
that out of polytheism our race has emerged. The 
opposite is the truth, as seen in the great religions of 
the East, wherein a monotheistic faith was sacredly 
held. There was no idolatry prior to the flood, and 
although the antediluvians forsook God, as some do 
in this our age, yet they were not idolaters. Poly- 
theism is the accunmlation of ao^es of moral descener- 
acy. So thought St. Paul in Eom. i, 20-25 : " For 



The Author of Law. 27 

the invisible tilings of him from the creation of the 
world are clearly seen, being understood by the things 
that are made, even liis eternal power and Godhead ; 
so that they are without excuse : 

" Because that, when they knew God, they glorified 
him not as God, neither were thankful ; but became 
vain in tlieir imaginations and their foolish heart was 
darkened. 

" Professing themselves to be wise, they became 
fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God 
into an image made like to corruptible man, and to 
birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. 

" Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, 
through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their 
own bodies between themselves : 

" Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and 
worshiped and served the creature more than the 
Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen." 

It is the favorite theory of some that the human race, 
originally barbaric, has ascended, by an innate force, 
through fetichism, through human sacrifice, through 
bestial worship, through the refined mythology of 
the Greeks to the noble monotheism of the Hebrews, 
and that out of that we will issue into atheism. 
Buckle is in error, that "the idea among the 
Hebrews was a gradual growtli, that the doctrine of 



28 Supremacy of Law. 

one God remained for centuries inoperative, and 
that tliey emerged from barbarism to the lofty con- 
ception of the Jehovah of the Old Testament." 
Rather a knowledge of the one true God was theirs 
from the beginning — from Adam to Noah, from Noah 
to Melchisedec, from Melchisedec to Abraham, from 
Abraham to Moses. Their relapses into idolatry were 
not the denial of the existence of the Supreme One, 
but were largely the result of social causes. 

Monotheism is characteristic of all the Oriental re- 
ligions in their first estate. This is true of the ancient 
Egyptians, whose Book of the Dead is said to be four 
thousand years old. It is a papyrean scroll now in the 
Museum of Turin. From this venerable sacred book 
Renouf, in his work on The Religion of Ancient 
Egypt^ page 76, quotes this remarkable monotheistic 
passage from the "Tablet of Beka," whereon the 
dying man is represented as saying : 

'^ I was just and true without malice, placing God 
in my heart and quick in discerning his will. I have 
come to the city of those who dwell in eternity. I 
have done good upon earth ; I have done no wrong ; 
I have done no crime ; I have approved of nothing 
base or evil, but have taken pleasure in speaking the 
truth, for I well know the glory there is in doing 
this upon earth from the first action even to the 



The Author of Law. 29 

tomb. ... I am a Saliu who took pleasure in right- 
eousness, conformably with the laws of the tribunal of 
the twofold Right. There is no lowly person whom 
I had oppressed ; I have done no injury to men who 
lionored their gods. The sincerity and goodness which 
were in the heart of my father and my mother my 
love paid back to them, ^ever have I outraged it in 
my mode of action toward them from the beginning 
of the time of my youth. Though great, 1 have acted 
as if I had been a little one. I have not disabled any 
one worthier than myself. My mouth has always 
been opened to utter true things, not to foment quar- 
rels. I have repeated what I have heard just as it 
was told to me. 

'^ I have not altered a story in the telling of it. 

" Doino^ that which is Rio:ht and hating: that which 
is Wrong, I was bread to the hungry, water to the 
thirsty, clothes to the naked, a refuge to him that was 
in want ; that which I did to him the great God hath 
done to me. 

" I was one who did that which was pleasing to his 
father and his mother ; the joy of his brethren, the 
friend of his companions, noble-hearted to all those of 
his city. I gave bread to the hungry. . . . I received 
on the road ; my doors were open to those who came 
fi'om without, and I gave them wherewith to refresh 



30 Supremacy of Law. 

themselves. And God hath inclined his countenance 
to me for what I have done ; he hath given me old age 
upon earth, in long and pleasant duration, with many 
cliildren at my feet, and sons in face of his own son." 

This is true of the ancient Persians, in whose Zend- 
Avesta Zoroaster, their great religious teacher, ex- 
pressed his clear and lofty conceptions of the Creator 
in language not unworthy of Moses, as given by 
Upham in his treatise on The Wise Men, page S3 : 

" Standing at thy fire, among the worshipers who 
pray to thee, I will be mindful of thy truth ; the liv- 
ing, the generous, the holy, the faithful. 

" That will I ask of thee, tell it me right, thou liv- 
ing God ! who wast in the beginning, the Father and 
Creator of truth. Who made of the sun and stars 
the way? Who causes the moon to increase and 
wane if not thou ? This I wish to know, except what 
I already know. 

" That will I ask of thee, tell it me right, thou liv- 
ing God ! Wiio is holding the earth and the skies 
above it ? Who made the waters and the trees of the 
field? Who is in the wind and storms, that they 
so quickly run ? Who is the Creator of the good- 
minded beings, thou Wise ? 

" That will I ask thee ; tell it me right, thou liv- 
ing God. Who made the lights of good effect and 



The Author of Law. 31 

the darkness ? Who made the sleep of good effect 
and the activity ? Who made the morning, noon, and 
night, reminding always the priest of liis duties ? 

" When my eyes beheld thee, the Essence of Truth, 
the Creator of Life, who manifests his life in liis 
works, then I knew thee to be the primeval spirit, 
thou Wise, so high in mind as to create tlie world, 
and the Father of the good mind. 

" I believe in thee as the Holy God, thou living 
Wise ! because I beheld thee to be the primeval 
cause of life in the creation. For thou hast made 
holy customs and words. Thou hast given emptiness 
to the base and good to the good man. I will believe 
in thee, thou glorious God, in the last period of 
creation." 

Lie met in this world the treatment given to all of 
whom the world is not worthy : " To what country 
shall I go ? Where shall I take my refuge ? What 
country is sheltering the master and his companion ? 
None of the servants pay reverence to me, nor the 
wicked rulers of the country. How shall I worship 
thee further, living Wise ? 

" I know that I am helpless. Look at me being 
amongst few men, for I have but few men ; I implore 
thee, weeping, thou living God, who grantest happi- 
ness as a friend gives a present to a friend. The good 



32 Supremacy of Law. 

of the good mind is in th}^ own possession, thou 
True." 

This great monotheistic thought is conspicuous in 
the Rig-Yeda, the most ancient of the sacred books of 
the Brahmins, wherein are noble expressions of devo- 
tion to the Supreme One, as translated by Max Miiller, 
chap. X, sec. 121 : 

" In the beginning there arose the source of golden 
light. He was the only born Lord of all that is. He 
established the earth and this sky. Who is the God 
to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ? 

" He who gives the life. He who gives strength, 
ivhose blessing all the bright gods desire, whose 
shadow is immortality, whose shadow is death. Who 
is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ? 

" He who through his power is the only King of 
the breathins: and awakenino- world. He who o^ov- 
erns all, man and beast. Who is the God to whom 
we shall offer our sacrifice ? 

''He whose power the snowy mountains, wliose 
power the sea proclaims, with the distant river. He 
whose these regions are, as it were his two arms. 
Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ? 

" He through whom the sky is bright and the earth 
firm. He through whom heaven was established; 
na}^ the highest heaven. He who measured out the 



The Author of Law. 33 

light in the air. Who is the God to whom we shall 
offer our sacrifice ? 

'' He to whom heaven and earth, standing firm by 
his will, look up, trembling inwardly. He over whom 
the rising sun shines forth. "Who is the God to whom 
we shall offer our sacrifice ? 

"Wherever the mighty water-clouds went, where 
they placed the seed and lit the fire, thence arose he 
who is the only light of the bright gods. Who is the 
God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ? 

" He who is God above all gods. May he not de- 
stroy us ; he, the Creator of the earth ; or he, the right- 
eous who created heaven ; he who also created the 
bright and mighty waters." 

This is also true of the Chinese, who have survived 
the wreck of empires, who have witnessed the funeral 
processions of Babylonia and Assyria, of Rome and 
Greece, of Parthia and Egypt, and whose " Temple of 
Heaven " at Pekin is the noblest structure ever dedi- 
cated to Divinity, in which there is no idol, and from 
whose altar the Emperor of China annually offers this 
remarkable prayer : 

" To thee, O mysteriously working Maker, I look 

up in thought. How imperial is the expansive arch 

where thou dwellest! Kovv is the time when the 

masculine energies of nature begin to be displayed, 
3 



34 Supremacy of Law. 

and with these bright ceremonies I reverently honor 
thee. Thy servant, I am but a reed or willow ; my 
heart is but as that of an ant; yet have I received 
thy favoring decree appointing me to the government 
of the empire. I deeply cherish a sense of my igno- 
rance and blindness, and am afraid lest I prove unwor- 
thy of thy great favors. Therefore will I observe all 
rules and statutes, striving, insignificant as I am, to 
discharge my loyal duty. Far distant here, I look up 
to thy heavenly palace. Come in thy precious char- 
iot to the altar. Thy servant, I bow my head to the 
earth, reverently expecting thine abundant grace. All 
my officers are here arranged along with me, joyfully 
worshiping before thee. All the spirits accompany 
thee as gods from east to west. Thy servant, I pros- 
trate myself to meet thee and reverently look up for 
thy coming. O Te ! O, that thou wouldst vouchsafe 
to accept our offerings and regard us while we wor- 
ship thee, whose goodness is inexhaustible." 

And this is true of Shintoism, the ancient religion 
of Japan, the temples of which are without an idol, 
and the worshipers in which offer this prayer : " O 
God, that dwellest in the high plain of heaven, 
who art divine in substance and in intellect and able 
to give protection from guilt and its penalties, to 
punish impurity and to cleanse us from uncleanness, 



The Author of Law. 35 

hosts of gods give ear and listen to these our peti- 
tions." 

It is a fact to which history has furnished no ex- 
ception that no nation, nor tribe, nor family of our 
race, known to have been idolatrous, has risen to the 
conception of the one true Grod by its own mental 
growth, through the process of argumentation. It is, 
therefore, a mischievous error to assert that we of to- 
day have been evolved, by the force of our own char- 
acter, through preceding forms of degrading idolatiy 
to sublime monotheism. The reverse is true. Idola- 
try is dengeration. It is a fall. When or where the 
first idol altar was erected is unknown; evidently, 
however, the inspiration of idol worship, whatever or 
wherever its first form, was the natural desire to em- 
body God in something in the heavens above or in the 
earth beneath. We all realize the absence of God. 
There are times when this absence is painful m the 
extreme. The soul cries out : " Where is thy God ? " 
and with Job exclaims : " O that I knew where I 
might find him ! that I might come even to his seat ! 
I would order my cause before him, and fill my mouth 
with arguments." God has withdrawn his presence 
from us because of sin. His invisibility is not a ne- 
cessity. Had man remained in his innocency the Al- 
mighty Father would have been tangibly present with 



36 Supremacy of Law. 

liis liuman children, as lie was prior to the fall. So 
oppressive at times is the conscious absence of God 
that one could almost apologize for the worship of 
things that are seen. 

But how sad a departure there has been in the his- 
tory of the race from a beginning so sublime ! The 
decadence has been gradual. First there was a beau- 
tiful symbolism : sun, moon and stars were the chosen 
symbols of the conceptions of the people of the Infinite 
One. In passing over the plains of Assyria I have 
seen the mounds of the fire- worshipers whereon they 
offered their devotions to God under the symbol of 
fire. With Zoroaster fire was the symbol of the sun, 
as the sun was the symbol of the Infinite One, but in 
process of time this beautiful symbolism gave way to 
liigli nature-worship, and the people bowed down and 
worshiped the heavenly bodies. In all the mytliolo- 
gies of the past there was the recognition of those ce- 
lestial divinities. Astronomy and astrology were early 
cultivated in these earlier days, and therein the As- 
syrians excelled. The sun and moon were selected 
as the outward symbols of the all-pervading power of 
God, and the worship of the heavenly hosts is not only 
the most ancient, but the most prevalent system of 
idolatry. Originating in Chaldea, it spread through 
Egypt, Greece, Scythia, India, and had its temples 



The Author of Law. 37 

and priests in Mexico. Osiris, Baal, Tammeus, Mo- 
loch, Chemosli, and Belus were different names of the 
sun god ; Venus and Astarte represented the moon, 
while Saturn and Jupiter represented the hosts of 
heaven. One is inclined to apologize for the ancient 
Assyrians and Babylonians paying homage to the sun. 
There is no object in the whole of the universe that 
symbolizes to the human mind so fully the majesty 
and glory of God. "Who has not shouted for joy 
at his coming forth after a night of tempest and 
storm ? I once stood on Fusiyama, the sacred mount- 
ain of the Japanese, and beheld the pilgrims worship 
the god of day. They had ascended to the summit, 
fourteen thousand feet high, the previous night, each 
one clad in white, each one with a rosary of crystals 
about his neck, each one with a staff whereon the 
priest of the mountain certified that the owner thei-eof 
had made the ascent. In the early dawn, while yet 
the morning star lingered in the quiet heavens, the 
pilgrims gathered on the summit in concentric circles 
and waited for the day. In their impatience they 
cried out : " Why dost thou delay ? Why dost thou 
not come forth ? " Soon the eastern sky was aflame 
with light ; then the sun arose, and as he came forth 
the pilgrims counted their rosaries, rang their bells, and 
shouted with delight, *' He is come ! He is come ! " 



38 Supremacy of Law. 

In the Pantheon of the oldest nations altars were 
erected to tlie worship of the starry hosts ; but in 
laspe of time this gave way to low nature-worship, 
when the people said, " God is kind and God is un- 
kind." Hence, in tlieir mythologies there was a god 
of the winds, of the storm, of the river, of the harvest, 
and of every thing that brought weal or woe to man- 
kind. Altars were erected to propitiate these imagi- 
nary divinities. 

Once seduced by divine ascriptions to the heavenly 
bodies, the degraded mind readily and rapidly de- 
scended. Homage was offered to the hills, trees, 
rivers, and animals. Every force in nature was em- 
bodied. The people sought to stay the inroads and 
ravages of wild beasts, and altars were erected to the 
most offensive animals known in the East. Egypt led 
in this terrible descent. Amid her thrones and palaces 
she reared splendid temples to the brute creation. 

There were shrines to Dagon, the fish-god ; to Beel- 
zebub, tlie fly-god ; to Nergal, the cock-god ; to Astima, 
the lie-goat ; to Nabhey, the dog ; to Adrammalick, tlie 
mule ; to Anamalick, the horse ; while in Egypt the 
serpent and the ox were esteemed divinities. 

Naturally enough, ancestral worship and homage 
paid to departed heroes w^as at an early period insti- 
tuted and became universal. It was prompted by 



The Author of Law. 3D 

gratitude. The tomb of some national benefactor 
became a slirine. With all our high civilization we 
are not strangers to such inclinations. In great ca- 
lamities we wish tliat the spirit of some benefactor 
would return to earth and defend us again. During 
the late war for the Union, when age heaved a sigh 
and shook his hoary locks at coming events, and ardent 
patriotism dared not pause in its burning career lest 
reflection should foresee defeat ; when the hopes of 
constitutional liberty were staked on the issue of a 
battle ; when the political progress of a hundred years 
was threatened with the retrocession of ten centuries — 
in that supreme moment how precious was the name 
of Washington to every loyal heart ! It was a national 
charm. Its very mention fired the nation's heart. 
His tomb became a shrine. Mount Vernon was the 
American Mecca. On the Black Friday of the strug- 
gle we gathered around it reverently and prayed, not 
to his shade, but to the God of our fathers. Had we 
been without Christianity, Washington's tomb would 
have been a national altar, smoking with sacrifices and 
flowing with grateful libations. In our individuality 
all have experienced a feeling akin to that which in- 
spired ancestral worship in others. We have gone to 
the grave of our dead to pray with the strange in- 
stinct that there was etficacy in the place of burial. 



40 Supremacy of Law. 

Who has not longed for the return of father or 
mother, husband or wife, to counsel and to cheer, on 
whose judgment we could rely, on whose strong arm 
we could find support? Such honorable feelings 
may have given birth to the hero-worship of the 
Assyrians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and Chinese 
during four thousand years. And as this ancestral 
worship has been practiced in lands where the grosser 
forms of idolatry have prevailed, so also have some 
minds risen to a sublime idealism. Mental qualities 
and heroic virtues were personified, sculptured in 
marble, and worshiped as divine. Truth, Justice, 
Love, Honesty, and Liberty were esteemed divinities, 
and at their shrines the better Greeks and Romans 
paid homage. How sublime the conception of the 
Athenian artist in producing the Temple of Wingless 
Victory, that freedom should abide forever beneath 
his Attic sky ! 

Yet idolatry, of whatever form, is degrading. India, 
that fair land whose air is perfumed with spices, 
whose valleys are rich with cereals, whose mountains 
abound in gems, whose Ganges and Jumna flow in 
majesty to the sea, whose Himalayas are covered with 
eternal snow, emblem of purity — is filled with a 
people degraded by idol worship. In the Pantheon 
of Brahminism there are not less than three hundred 



The Author of Law. 41 

and thirty million gods. Almost every object is wor- 
shiped. I have seen the women of that noble land 
wander along the banks of the Ganges, make a mud 
divinity, worship it, and throw it into the flowing 
river. It is not possible to depict the degradation of 
the Hindu mind ; that mind which, in its better mo- 
ments, anticipated Europe in the grandest principles 
of mathematics, philosophy, and poetry. No such 
contradiction can be found elsewhere in the world. 
Let us go to Benares, the paradise of the fakirs, 
adorned with brilliant temples, ornamented with the 
most costly shrines, around which poor and rich rev- 
erently bow, and where the chief object of worship is 
obscene. In one temple five hundred monkeys are 
fed at the public expense, while the devotees are dying 
of hunger. I saw the son of the Maha-rajah Vizia- 
nagram, a splendid youth, highly cultured, of gentle 
disposition, surrounded with wealth, whose address 
was refined, but who had just come from the shrine 
of Shiva, and on whose brow was a speck of paint, 
the proof that he had paid his morning devotions. 
In the temple of Juggernaut, on the banks of the 
Hoogly, I saw another noble youth worshiping that 
hideous idol, notwithstanding he was a student in one 
of the colleges at Calcutta. In the suburbs of Cal- 
cutta is the temple of Kali, the goddess of the Thugs. 



42 Supremacy of Law. 

Many worshipers were at the shrine, ofiering black 
goats to the bloody idol, wliose whole appearance was 
frightful to the last degree. 

Idolatry impoverishes a people. The Chinese ex- 
pend annually one hundred and fifty-eight millions of 
dollars to propitiate the spirits of the departed, while 
the living die of hunger. In that great empire there 
are not less than a million of idol temples, valued at a 
billion of dollars in gold, to maintain which in their 
glory keeps the people poor. And two thirds of the 
women of that empire, out of a population of four 
hundred millions, are engaged in making shrines and 
preparing articles used in ancestral worship. What 
an immense loss to national industry ! 

And this decadence is not confined to worshipers 
of idols. A merciful God will wink at the times of 
ignorance, but he will be a "consuming fire" to those 
who, under the Gospel, have represented him as a 
monster in his partiality, a tyrant in the inexorable- 
ness of his decrees. 

Mohammed has been praised for his sublime ascrip- 
tions of adoration to Allah, and is honored for the re- 
announcement of that venerable truth, '' There is one 
God ; " yet he taught his followers the worst form of 
fatalism — that the Almighty neither respected the per- 
son nor the character of his creatures, but by an act of 



The Author of Law. 43 

his arbitrary will, joined to the most cruel indifference 
as to the merits of virtue and the demerits of vice, 
determined the destiny of unborn and untold mill- 
ions of his human children. He represents his Allah 
in the morning of creation as taking a handful of 
earth and dividing it into two equal parts, and throw- 
ing one half into heaven, saying, " Go there, I care 
not," and throwing the other half into hell, saying, 
" Go there, I care not." Who would worship such a 
God ? Sitting upon the throne of his sovereignty, 
careless as to the wants and wishes, the character and 
rights, the prayers and praises of those whom he had 
created without their consent, he is a bloody mon- 
ster, an execrable tyrant, never to be loved, unworthy 
of respect. 

And it is passing strange that one of the most re- 
markable minds in Christendom should have given 
expression to a corresponding thought, of the absolute 
sovereignty of the Almighty, regardless of the birth, 
age, condition, character, rights of the children of 
men. I now quote from the Calvinistic Confession of 
Faith : '' By the decree of God, for the manifestations 
of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated 
unto everlasting life, and others foreordained unto 
everlasting death. These men and angels thus pre- 
destinated and foreordained are particularly and 



44 SUPKEMACY OF LaW. 

unchangeably designed. They liave been selected, 
and this number is so certain and definite that it can- 
not be increased or diminished." 

The soul of every honorable man revolts at such a 
conception of the Father Almighty. It goes upon 
the antecedent hypothesis that before a child is born 
into the world God selected, numbered, and named 
that child for the joys of heaven or the torments of 
the damned; and that, without regard to character, 
good or bad, lie made him a partner of his bliss or 
assigned him to hell to whom heaven by right be- 
longed. Aw^ay with such a God ! Let no songs of 
praise banquet his ear ; let no libations moisten his 
altars ; let his name never be mentioned by mortal 
man. 

It is the great mission of Christ to restore to the 
world the original portraiture of our Father in 
heaven. " lie that hath seen me hath seen the Father." 
He does not say, " hath seen the Father also^^^ but, 
'' hath seen the Father, '^'^ He calls upon the world : 
'' Behold me, and in the wisdom of my teachings, in 
the justice of my decisions, in the conditions of my 
salvation, in my perfect character, in the manifesta- 
tions of my goodness, in the works I have wrought, 
in the sweetness of my mercy, m the luster of my con- 
descension, behold ' Our Father which art in heaven.' " 



The Author of Law. 45 

"When the traveler visits Milan lie is less attracted 
by the basilica of St. Ambrose, adorned with many 
pinnacles and resplendent witli statuary, than by a 
restored painting — the work of the great Leonardo 
Da Vinci. It is the story of the " Last Supper," on 
the end wall of the refectory in a Milanese monastery. 
It was a glorious picture of Christ and the twelve, 
life-size and true to life. The sfenius of the artist cul- 
minated in the face of Jesus. During the terrible 
wars that occurred in northern Italy the monastery 
was pillaged and the pictured end of the refectory 
was plastered over. Indifferent alike to the splendid 
creation of one of the grandest of masters and the 
sublime lesson it taught, this noble picture was lost to 
the world for years and years. By accident the plaster 
crun:ibled and the painting was revealed. Carefully 
and tenderly another artist removed the plaster, and, 
as if inspired, he brought out one by one the faces in 
the illustrious group — St. Peter, the chief; St. James, 
the son of thunder ; St. John, the beloved ; and then 
the face of Jesus, serene, thoughtful, majestic. 

This work of restoration is the holy mission of 
Christ. He lifts the veil of the ages and shows us 
the Father, from whose bosom he came, as no angel 
ever came, and between whom and him there is a fel- 
lowship unknown to any other in all the universe. 



46 Supremacy of Law. 

He is the '' brightness of his glory and the express 
image of liis person.'* He comes in the glory which 
he had with the Father " before the world was," and 
pi-ayed : " O righteous Father, the world hath not 
known thee : but I have known thee, and these have 
known that thou hast sent me. And I have deckred 
unto them thy name, and will declare it : that the 
love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them." 
From Mount Moriah lie points to God's portraiture 
of himself on Mount Sinai ; while heaven and earth 
sing '^ the song of Moses . . . and the Lamb," the 
law and the gospel, the light and the hope of man- 
kind. Without liim, God is but dimly seen ; through 
him God is seen face to face. 

When you go to Rome enter tlie Sistine Chapel, 
and on the ceiling you will see what, at a distance, 
seem to be clouds of glory : but draw nigh and the 
golden clouds disappear and angel faces appear to 
view. It is the master-stroke of Raphael's pencil. 

So draw nigh to Christ. In his adorable face thou 
shalt see the Father Almighty, ''merciful and gra- 
cious, long-suflEering, abundant in goodness and truth : 
keeping mercy for thousands of generations." 



The Promulgation of Law. 47 



11. 

THE PROMULGATION OF LAW. 

GOD is the author and source of law. So thought 
the clearest and strongest minds of the ages : 

"No mortal can frame law to purpose." — Plato, 

" Even the unwritten laws of mankind are given by 
God . ' ' — Socrates, 

" Law is the invention and gift of God." — De- 
mosthenes, 

" When the wisest council of men have with the 
greatest prudence made laws, yet frequent emergencies 
happen which they did not foresee, and therefore 
they are put upon repeals and supplements of such, 
their laws ; but Almighty God, by an ample foresight, 
foresaw all events and could therefore fit laws pro- 
portionate to the things he made." — Sir Matthew 
Hale, 

" Laws written, if not on stone tables, yet on the 
azure of infinitude in the inner heart of God's crea- 
tion, certain as life, certain as death, I say the laws 
are there; thou shalt not disobe^^ them; it were bet- 
ter for thee not, better a hundred deaths than yea ; 



48 Supremacy of Law. 

terrible penalties, if thou still need penalties, are there 
for disobeying." — Carlyle, 

'^ He who considers what it is that constitutes the 
force of penal laws will iind it is better their agree- 
ment with the moral feelings which nature has planted 
in the breast, when the actions they punish are such 
and only such as the tribunal of conscience has already 
condemned. Tliey are the constant object of respect 
and reverence ; they enforce and corroborate the prin- 
ciples of moral order by publishing its decisions and 
executing its sanctions. They present to the view of 
mankind an august image of a moral administration, a 
representation in miniature of the eternal justice which 
presides in the dispensations of the Almighty." — 
Hobert Hall, 

If these earlier and original thinkers were not per- 
plexed with doubts touching the source of law, but ex- 
pressed themselves with clearness, directness, and 
courage, if the origin of law is divine, its sweep uni- 
versal, its authority eternal, by what process do we 
ascertain the existence thereof? The beautiful pre- 
cepts of the Decalogue, now the glory of our high 
-civilization, can be traced backward to the origin of man. 
The three distinct features of moral law are conspicu- 
ous in the story of Eden. The command to dress the 
garden is the mandate ; the interdiction to partake of 



The Promulgation of Law. 49 

a certain fruit is the prohibition ; the privilege to eat 
certain other fruit is the permissive element of law. 
These three simple and beneficent principles are writ- 
ten in the constitution of man, and so distinctly that 
they prophesy of the promulgation of the law on 
Mount Sinai. 

In a certain sense they constitute the original edition 
of the Decalogue. Were it possible to prove that the 
story of Mount Sinai was a pretense, a maginficent 
theatrical performance, that would not abate a single 
iota from the divine origin of the essence of those ten 
commands. We would turn to man and dissect his 
physique and find them written there ; we would 
analyze his mind and discover them there ; we would 
investigate his moral nature, and behold, they are 
there. Nothing, therefore, is gained by rejecting the 
story of Sinai and turning our back on Moses, for the 
centuries preceding would rise up in judgment in 
solemn protest against the rejection of a fact old as 
Adam, certain as the history of our race. So thought 
St. Paul : 

"Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the 

epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink, 

but with the Spirit of the living God ; not in tables of 

stone, but in fieshly tables of the heart." 

The common distinction made between natural law 
4 



50 Supremacy of Law. 

and moral law is without a difference except in appli- 
cation. The moral is no less natural than the phys- 
ical. If the Creator has ordained tliat light shall 
move in straight lines, that all material bodies 
shall tend to a common center, that all life shall pro- 
ceed from an antecedent life, it is equally rational to 
suppose that he has a will concerning the conduct of 
man, and that in some way he would make known his 
will to the intelligent subjects of his government. 

That will may be impressed on the order and con- 
stitution of nature, and indicated by results in oppo- 
site courses of conduct, as in pain and pleasure. 
Such sensations are facts, and accord with the expe- 
rience and observation of mankind. Prudence and 
imprudence, temperance and intemperance, justice 
and injustice are attended with opposite results. In 
all ages men have befriended what they esteemed 
virtue and punished what they called vice. Some 
thinkers are ever reminding us of what they are 
pleased to call " natural law," and with characteristic 
emphasis assert the immutability thereof. Yet they 
have not given us a satisfactory definition of the 
term nature or its adjective natural. If by nature 
is meant the sum of all phenomena, together with the 
causes which produce the same, including not only 
what happens, but all those capable of happening, the 



The Promulgation of Law. 51 

unused capabilities of influences being as much a part 
of the ideas of nature as those which take effect, or 
the aggregate of the powers or properties of any thing 
and of all things, then by nature is simply meant the 
established order of the universe under which and in 
which we live. The forced definition between natural 
and moral law leads to a confusion of ideas and works 
injury to society. Man's moral nature is part of the 
established order of the universe, and moral law is 
natural law in the highest and truest sense. 

If a distinction is allowable it is only in this : that 
moral laws relate to a person who is capable of voli- 
tional action — one who acts from motives ; if man, by 
the endowment of nature, is capable of volition, his 
acts of prudence and imprudence, of justice and in- 
justice, of piety and impiety are within the domain of 
natural law. This power of volition and the responsi- 
bility which flows therefrom is an endowment and 
not an acquirement. 

Moral law is not the creation of Christianity, for 
had not Christ appeared there would still be volitional 
action, independent of all creeds and responsibilities. 
The Ten Commandments are the compendium of our 
moral philosophy ; they are the written declarations 
of the constitution of nature, older than Moses, older 
than Abraham, older than Noah ; their essence is as 



52 Supremacy of Law. 

old as God. They contain in their inhibitions all the 
vices known to our race, and in their mandates all the 
virtues that have blessed mankind. Their compre- 
hensiveness is their most conspicuous characteristic. 
Their essential principles are written all over man's 
nature, physical, mental, and moral ; even their more 
delicate indications may be found in beautiful tracery 
upon his threefold being. Our experience and ob- 
servation are in proof that they are promotive of man's 
happiness in his domestic, social, and national relations, 
so that it is possible for us to gather up these precepts 
from man's triple constitution and write them out, as 
did Moses on the Mount. His mission was to receive 
from the hands of the Creator these great facts and 
re-enact them in statutory law. This higher law ante- 
dates Mount Sinai. The older Bible of our race is 
nature. Natural religion underlies revealed religion ; 
no true religion is false to nature. 

We are bound to be true to history, especially to 
that which comes to us so well avouched, so easily 
sustained by evidence that cannot be gainsaid, and 
which appeals to the calm judgment of an impartial 
world ; and our interest in this subject is the greater, 
as it is a recognition of the union of two worlds and 
the intimate relation the Father Almighty holds to 
his creatures on earth. He who respects the Jewish 



The Promulgation of Law. 53 

law-giver must also accept Jesus Christ, the greater 
Teacher, who accredited the story of Sinai as a verity, 
and by whom its teachings are promulgated to the 
uttermost parts of the earth. 

It is not too much to affirm that upon this historic 
fact hang the Jewish Commonwealth and tlie Chris- 
tian Church — in a word, the whole system of religious 
truth from the beginning to the end. If Mount Sinai 
were only a grand theatrical display, then all else falls 
to the ground as uncertain and unreal. 

But what are the evidences that should command 
our faith toucliing this memorable event ? All must 
concede that it is stupendous. Its magnitude chal- 
lenges our faith ; its unusual occurrence demands our 
severe attention ; but belief is possible if the evidence 
is sufficient. What proof have we that God gave the 
Ten Commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai? 

The prevalence of law in the physical and mental 
universe prophesies of the law for the moral conduct 
of men and nations. If the twofold nature of man is 
regulated by law it would be anomalous to the last 
degree were the third found exempt. There are rea- 
sons to justify, not only the recognition of the neces- 
sity of such a system of moral laws, but a demand for 
the promulgation thereof, distinct, direct, conspicu- 
ous. It must be apparent to all that there is no 



54 Supremacy of Law. 

obligation where there is no authority, no authority 
where there is not a just claim, no violation where 
there is not a knowledge of said claim. Only invincible 
ignorance could be our justification at the bar of the 
inexorable Judge. If at last we could prove that we 
had no knowledge of the authority and obligations of 
his law — that said ignorance could not be overcome, was 
never overcome — then we could have the right to the 
divine clemency, whatever may be the extent thereof; 
but if this revelation comes to us with sufficient evi- 
dence we are without excuse. 

The necessity of this promulgation is more than an 
initial question. It is a prime fact ; for while it is 
true that in delicate tracery these obligations of the 
Decalogue can be found in our constitution, yet by 
the lapse of time, by the abuse of nature, by the cor- 
ruption of truth, that tracery is largely effaced. It is 
a historic fact, that comes to us with all the accuracy 
of authentic history, that the wisest thinkers in the 
better ages of the world had no such precepts formu- 
lated as we have here. They caught glimpses of what 
came to us, they drew inferences, they inferred duty 
from consequences ; they acted from compulsion when 
they restrained their passions rather than from voli- 
tion, and from necessity when they rendered obedi- 
ence to a beneficent 2:overnment. 



The Promulgation of Law. 55 

It is the hoast of some unbelievers that there are 
ancient records which contain truths as old and as im- 
portant as those written by Moses. They remind us 
of Buddha and his five precepts : 

^' Thou shalt not steal. 

" Thou shalt not kill. 

" Thou shalt not lie. 

" Thou shalt not commit adultery. 

" Thou shalt not be a drunkard." 

But this great Asiatic lived a thousand years after 
Moses, who has been received as the law-giver of 
mankind. The Tri-Pitakas of the Buddhists contain 
sublime morals and pure aspirations ; but their founder 
lived and died in the sixth century before Christ, and 
a knowledge of Jewish law was prevalent in India 
and all the East. They also remind us of the Five 
Kings of the Chinese, a collection of the best sayings 
of China sages on the ethical duties of life, and some 
of these sayings are worthy of any age ; but those say- 
ings do not antedate the Christian era more than 
eleven hundred years, and Confucius, who has the 
honor of having collated them, lived over a thousand 
years subsequent to the death of Moses. They also 
remind us of the Yedas of the Hindus, which have 
been extravagantly lauded as older and purer than the 
Bible, as containing all that is worth knowing, as 



56 Supremacy of Law. 

preceding all that we possess ; but there is authority 
for believing that the oldest and best of these re- 
ligious hymns were composed three centuries after 
Moses had written the Pentateuch. It is not known 
by whom they were written or how collected into 
their present form — handed down from generation 
to generation 7nemoriter, The Brahmin was required 
to commit to memory the thousand and ten Yedic 
hymns during his fourteen years of student life. 

Older and better than all these sacred books of the 
East is the Zend-Avesta. IText to our Scriptures 
this is the grandest of all the sacred books, and next 
to Moses Zoroaster is the noblest of religious charac- 
ters ; yet he lived and taught and died nearly three 
hundred years after Moses had ascended to his reward. 
It is a conspicuous fact and an argument of weight 
that the Ten Commandments are the oldest specimens 
of alphabetical writing known to mankind. The pic- 
torial characters of ancient America, the cuneiform 
inscriptions of old Assyria, the hieroglypliics of ven- 
erable Egypt do not rise to the dignity of alphabetical 
writing. In the most ancient Sanskrit there are no 
words that answer to pen, ink, paper, book, or vol- 
ume. All the letters of the Hebrew alphabet are in 
the Ten Commandments. The inspired record is that 
the promulgation was first oral to Adam, and then 



The Pkomulgation of Law. 57 

written on tables of stone by the finger of the Al- 
mighty and delivered to Moses. The centuries have 
continued their solemn march into the past eternity. 
Empires have risen and fallen, religious systems have 
vanished from the vision of the world, but to-day 
Moses stands forth, with his simple precepts, the 
moral law-giver of the civilized world. 

There are two ways in which the communication 
from lieaven to earth may be made — either to an in- 
dividual or to a nation. If to an individual, the man- 
ifestations would be characteristic of individuality,, 
mentally and morally. Each man would be a law 
unto himself. There would be no authorized teacher^ 
and man would be left to himself to obey or disobey 
as passion might incline and prejudice might dictate. 
But the Infinite Father selected a nation of three mill- 
ions of people to witness this great event and to be the 
recipients of this eternal law. If it is true that an in- 
dividual was the chosen medium of this communication 
to his nation, it is equally true that it was not given in a 
corner, but in the presence of millions of witnesses. 

They had been prej)ared for this grander event 
by a series of supernatural events, which qualified 
both Moses for his mission and the nation to witness 
the grandeur of this supernatural display. This 
chosen man came from the sheep-folds of Horeb to 



58 Supremacy of Law. 

his own people with tlie simple story that, while 
watching his flocks in the desert of Arabia, a ^-bush 
burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed." 
Approaching it to discover the mystery he heard a 
voice saying, " Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for 
the place whereon thou standest is holy ground." 
Reverently listening he heard that voice saying, " I 
will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring 
forth my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt." 
With a calm courage born of sincerity Moses in- 
quired, " What is thy name ? " The voice replied, '' I 
am that I am." " Go into Egypt : say unto Pharaoh, 
Let my people go." He declared himself incompe- 
tent, that he was a stammerer, that Pharaoh would 
not believe him, that it was too much to ask of any 
man ; he therefore prayed to be excused, but the di- 
vine Yoice demanded immediate obedience. Then 
followed a wonderful dispensation of miracles on 
mind and matter, on land and sea, on men and na- 
tions. The first-born in every Egyptian household was 
slain — a fact so curious in itself that it was recorded in 
the annals of the empire ; and monuments have re- 
cently been exhumed in the land of the Pharaohs bear- 
ing testimony to that strange occurrence. From that 
day forward to the present time, through twenty-five 
centuries, the Hebrews have celebrated the passover 



The Promulgation of Law. 59 

instituted to commemorate the fact tliat their first- 
born had been spared on that memorable night when 
the first-born of the Egyptians were slain. Then came 
the division of the Red Sea, whose waters stood on 
either side like walls of adamant, and the emancipated 
people passed over in safety. 

Traveling througli a desert, where neither shrub 
grows nor fountain flows, they were strangely fed by 
Him who said of himself, " If I were hungry, I woidd 
not tell thee," who commanded the resources of his 
power and fed his people as a shepherd does his flock. 
From tlie smitten rock the crystal waters flowed to 
slake their thirst. By day there was a strange cloud 
that led them on. At night that cloud became lu- 
minous with glory. 

Such were the preparatory indications of the com- 
ing of the great event, the grandest in history ; but 
the preparations were disturbed by the murmurs of 
the people, is^ever in harmony with theii' leader, ever 
stiff-necked, rebellious, tumultuous, difficult to gov- 
ern, and jealous of those who had led them forth to 
liberty, there never was a more unpopular leader of 
men in the history of the world than Moses. His own 
brother Aaron and his own sister Miriam conspired 
against him. He was the butt of ridicule, the victim 
of jealousy, an object of revenge by an ungrateful 



60 Supremacy of Law. 

people. Conspiracies were plotted against liim on 
the right hand and on the left. But all this is to the 
advantage of our faith, as the possibility of collusion 
is thereby precluded on the part of himself and the 
people. 

More than two millions and a half of people were 
called to witness this extraordinary display, which had 
been previously announced. Three days' warning had 
been given that on the third day the manifestation 
would occur. Orders were issued that, having per- 
formed their ablutions, the people should array them- 
selves in their best garments and the head of each 
family should stand in his tent-door. Six hundred 
thousand w^arriors, armed for the protection of the 
households of Israel, gathered around that memorable 
scene, which was open to public inspection. It was 
too immense to hide. No man could produce the 
phenomena which occurred, such as the earthquake, 
the lightning, the thunder, the fire, the smoke, and 
the sound of the trumpet. The people saw^ and felt, 
and became the witnesses to mankind. 

The j)liice selected was in the heart of the Arabian 
peninsula. Er-Eahah, " the Place of Rest," was the 
chosen spot, a noble plain, capable of accommodat- 
ing the vast multitude, surrounded with mountains. 
The one selected for the coming of the Lord w^as 



The Promulgation of Law. 61 

Eas-Suf-Sa-Fah, 'Hhe Mount of the Willow." Two 
thousand feet high, it stands forth as an altar worthy 
an honor so majestic. The ages have receded, but 
the mountain stands firm, the witness of tlie Mount 
of the Lord. 

The geographical features of the scene are proof of 
the giving of the law. Five points of topography 
corroborate the fact. It was necessary to find a plain 
where nearly three millions of people could encamp 
and behold Moses ascend the Mount of God ; for the 
record is that he ascended in the presence of all the 
people. Certainly a man who proposed to impose on 
his people and upon mankind would not have been so 
open. Where else, shall we go to find such a plain 
adjacent to such a mountain, sloping gently, as if it 
were a floor of a sanctuary, to the base of the holy 
Mount ? Its amplitude is in proof of the recorded 
fact. On the left was Wady-Es-Sheikh, near it Wady- 
Leja, and on the right Wady-El-Deir (wherein is the 
rock that was smitten by Moses), where there was 
room for the encampment of four millions of people. 
How strange it is that in a desert like Arabia, where 
the soil is scorched by the heat of the eternal sun, with 
only one other green spot, (called '' the Paradise of the 
Bedouins," at the base of Mount Serbal) yet around 
Mount Sinai are four running streams, with numerous 



62 Supremacy of Law. 

springs and wells, where the shepherds hie with their 
flocks and enjoy the rich and beautiful pastures. 

It was also necessary to find a mountain that could 
be *^ touched." An impostor would not have de- 
scended to details like these. There is but one other 
mountain that it has been my fortune to see that 
could be " touched." It is Tu-Toch-Ar-ls'u-Lah, or 
El Capitan, in the Yosemite Yalley, which rises over 
three thousand feet perpendicularly, like a Corinthian 
column. The traveler can approach and touch it. 
Because of this peculiarity the Lord sent Moses down 
to place guards around the mount, that neither man 
nor beast might touch it. Hence St Paul says : '' Ye 
are not come unto the mount that might be touched, 
and that burned with fire." 

It is also necessary to find an atmosphere surround- 
ing such a plain and mountain where the voice could 
be distinctly heard from plain to summit, two thou- 
sand feet high ; for it is said that when this man stood 
on the summit he heard the voice of the people from 
below, and that he and Joshua discussed the question 
whether it was the shout of victory or the music of 
the dance. This peculiar property of the Arabian 
atmosphere remains until this day. Leaving a friend 
on the plain below I ascended to the summit and 
conversed with him without strain or difliculty. 



The Promulgation of Law. 63 

As expressive of the truthfulness of the record tlie 
strange incident is stated that when Moses had reached 
the apparent summit of the mountain the Almighty 
said to him, " Come up higher." On the summit 
proper there is a beautiful garden, and in that garden 
grows the most aromatic shrub that ever delighted the 
senses of man. Years have vanislied since I inhaled 
its rich aroma, yet its perfume is as delightful in mem- 
ory as when I pressed the plant years ago. From that 
mountain-garden, where Joshua and the elders re- 
mained, there rises in majesty, hundreds of feet 
higher, a bold peak, up which Moses ascended into the 
presence of the Lord. 

What intense excitement prevailed throughout all 
the camp of Israel ! No doubt there were people 
among those millions who said : " Now for a decep- 
tion ; now we are to be made the laughing-stock of 
the Egyptians ; this man Moses declares that he is 
authoriz:ed to ascend and receive the law, and what 
shall be the result ? " It is not possible for us to sup- 
pose there were no doubters on that occasion, no un- 
believers there, who added an element of excitement, 
which it is not difficult for us to appreciate. 

Behold the grand march ! Seventy elders accom- 
panied Moses (had he gone alone our suspicions 
would have been aroused, but seventy princes of the 



•64 Supremacy of Law. 

House of Israel attended him) ; with him and them 
were his brother Aaron, and Hiir the son of Caleb, 
husband of Miriam, the sister of Moses, and the stern 
warrior Joshua, who afterward commanded the sun 
to stand still on Gibeon and the moon to linger in 
the valley. of Ajalon. Such were the nearer wit- 
nesses ; their character is proof of their sincerity. It 
were a reflection on the law of evidence and the con- 
.sensus of the world's testimony to suppose that this 
man (knowing tlieir character) could induce them to 
enter into collusion with him to impose on the world. 
Of all the millions who lingered below every eye was 
intent, every ear was listening. Moses is far in ad- 
vance. In the face of the mountain are two ravines ; 
Tip one of these he ascends in the presence of all the 
people. Now he passes beyond a peak ; now behind 
another ; again and again he appears and disappears 
to the view of the astonished people. Up, up he 
climbs to the summit, and stands forth before three 
millions of spectators. 

A nation of witnesses felt the earthquake, saw the 
lightning, heard the thunder, beheld the smoke, gazed 
upon the fire, listened to the trumpets, and as Jeho- 
vali touched the mountain it reeled with earthquake 
power. Such was the awful scene. 

In the year 1868, under the Director-General of the 



The Promulgation of Law. 65 

Survey of Great Britain, an expedition was sent to 
Mount Sinai to see if the topography of the scene 
corresponded with the incidental description thereof. 
Members of that expedition visited two points : Mount 
Serbal, that rises in glory from the " Paradise of the 
Bedouins," and after examining all of its features 
they concluded that that could never have been the 
Mount of the Lord ; then passing to the plain of 
Er-Kahah, reaching it through the Nukb-Hawy — the 
^^Pass of the Winds" — these severe scientists, not 
inclined to accept the Scripture without applying 
the record to the topography of the scene, reached 
the conclusion, and published that conclusion to the 
British Government, which is now in the archives of 
Great Britain, that what is known as Eas-Suf-Sa-Fah 
Is the Mount of the Lord. 

There is an argument which statesmen will appre- 
"Ciate and men familiar with political wars and histo- 
ries can realize. In enforcing his claim upon the 
faith of the people Moses uttered a prophecy remark-^ 
able for its details, for its sweep through the centuries, 
and for its wonderful fulfillment, of which we are the 
living witnesses. It was uttered at a time when the 
nation was entering upon its career of power and 
glory. He had attained for himself a triumph over 

the prejudices of his age and had reached the height 
5 



66 Supremacy of Law. 

of personal greatness which is accorded to him in the 
larger sense by the civilized world. A mere politician 
would not have incurred the displeasure of the people 
at such a time by a prediction so full of the most 
gloomy forebodings. He did not hesitate to declare 
that the downfall of the nation would issue from their 
religious apostasies. Other and greater nations have 
come to final ruin from ambition, the love of conquest, 
and acts of injustice ; but here, for the first time in. 
national history, a great statesman announces a truth 
which subsequent history has verified — that political 
ruin issues from religious apostasy. It was essential- 
ly unique. Its parallel is unknown to the historian. 
Statesmen may throw out the voice of warning and 
sound the tocsin of alarm in the midst of a political 
crisis, but he appeals to patriotism. He deals in im- 
pressive words. He paints the brighter side of the 
picture of national life. He kindles enthusiasm by 
the promise of superior glory and by the advancement 
of national prosperity. It is only the sturdy reformer 
whose convictions are deep, who has the courage of 
his thoughts, who dares to cast the horoscope of coming 
evils to a nation. Indifferent alike to the frowns and 
the smiles of the age wherein he lived, this man arose 
superior to personal considerations. Having con- 
quered the prejudice of his times, having received the 



The Promulgation of Law. 67 

homage of three millions of people, having achieved 
the greatest of martial victories, and standing forth in 
the splendor of his own renown, he boldly foretold the 
downfall of the Jewish Commonwealth. He does not 
generalize. There is nothing of the ambiguity of the 
Delphic oracles or of the PIollow Oak of Dodona, but 
with an exactitude of details and a precision of lan- 
guage he foretells three things. He does not merely 
say there shall be war, for that is not unusual, but he 
says there shall be invasion and famine and pestilence. 
Why say invasion ? Why not say war ? Call it in- 
vasion, for these people were never invaders — in their 
martial history they were defenders. They were not 
a conquering nation, and how impossible it was for a 
man to know that in the oncoming ages the genius of 
war should not possess that Commonwealth and his 
people go forth to plunder and conquer. Rather they 
w^ere to be the defenders of their laws, their altars, 
their institutions. No people ever suffered more from 
invasion than the Hebrews. Jerusalem, once the joy 
of the whole earth, was subjected to not less than 
twenty-seven sieges, and upon its original site eleven 
cities have been built in succession, each conqueror 
leveling the debris, and rearing thereon a new city of 
renown, so that no one has trodden the streets of an- 
cient Jerusalem since five hundred years prior to the 



68 Supremacy of Law. 

coming of Christ, and no one will until the spade has 
gone down from one to two hundred feet through the 
ruins of temples, through mosaic pavements, to the 
naked rock once trodden by the feet of Solomon and 
his princes. 

Although their country was as the Garden of the 
Lord, with all the features of the four seasons, with 
all the characteristics of plain and mountain, valley 
and hill, river and ocean, maritime coasts and com- 
mercial centers, yet they were to suffer from famine ; 
in the land that flowed with milk and honey, in a 
region of abundance, where the soil has an inexhausti- 
ble fertility, where all the fruits which delight the 
taste, all the cereals which sustain life, all the animals 
for usefulness and pleasure, were in abundance, as tes- 
tified to by Strabo, the historian and geographer, and 
verified by the Romans. For Palestine was always a 
prize to the conqueror. It was the High Bridge of 
the nations. Roman and Greek, Persian and Parthian, 
Turk and Egyptian, coveted the prize. Vespasian 
and Titus had coins prepared on which are delineated 
the fruits of that fair land. Yet what other country 
has suffered more from gaunt famine ? 

Third in this trinity of woes was to be pestilence. 
Naturally the land of health, adjacent to the ocean, fa- 
vored with mountain winds, without marshes breathing 



The Promulgation of Law. 69 

malaria or superinducing fevers, yet pestilence was 
to come. In a land where tlie flame of immortal 
youth was to burn and roseate Imes were to pencil 
the cheek of humanity, there premature death was 
to turn Palestina into a vast charnel-house. 

He does not say with the politician, " If you commit 
such and such political blunders you shall come to 
grief," but places this terrible result upon moral de- 
flection and religious apostasy. He says, ''If you 
turn away from the God of your fathers, if you fail 
to recognize him, he will forsake you and you shall 
be smitten with the besom of destruction." This is 
remarkable, for we can readily see that a man may be 
true to his political institutions yet unfaithful to his 
religious obligation. To disregard the latter would 
provoke this trinity of evils. 

And for this political and moral defection they 
were to be scattered into all nations — sold into 
captivity until there were to be no buyers. They 
were to And no rest. 

For a thousand years before Romulus and Remus 
were born, a thousand years before Rome was known 
to the world or the site of the seven-hilled city saw 
the march of a conquering Roman, a thousand years 
before all this, this man Moses comes down through 
the vista of the oncoming centuries to fresco on the 



70 Supremacy of Law. 

canvas of the future the coining conqueror who should 
be known in history by the standard he bore, sur- 
mounted by the Roman eagle. Until Rome came 
the eagle was not the ensign of any nation ; and 3^et 
here is an anticipation in prophecy that this king of 
birds should be the emblem of the Roman Empire. 

They were to be wanderers. The Wandering Jew 
of romance is the story of that people. Never were 
people so scattered, so abused, so banished, so mur- 
dered. France banished the Jews seven times, and 
at one time fifteen thousand were massacred in cold 
blood. In 1492 eight hundred thousand Hebrews 
were banished from Spain. At the coronation of 
Richard I. many were massacred, and at the coronation 
of Edward I. tlie Jews were exiled for four hundred 
years. In 1350, during the Black Plague, Germany 
burned the Jews by thousands, attributing the cause 
of the evils to their liabits. Switzerland, the mountain 
home of freedom, free to all but the Hebrew, banished 
them to distant lands. Russia robbed, exiled, and 
murdered tliem without mercy. Rome, the city of 
the Holy Father, instituted the Ghetti, and on 
Christmas and Easter, as a sort of pastime, the chil- 
dren of the Holy City were permitted to stone the 
Jews, to celebrate those two great events. It is a 
prophecy that has become history, " They shall find 



The Promulgation of Law. Y1 

no rest." We are all witnesses to this sad historic 
fact. The Hebrew nation rose to greatness and 
glory, and at one time extended its domain from the 
Mediterranean to the borders of Persia, and from the 
Nile on the soutli to the Tanriis chain on the north — 
an empire of which any man might be proud, and 
sufficient to fill the measure of human ambition. Yet 
the day of retrocession came. Apostasy followed 
apostasy. The terrible genii, invasion, famine, pesti- 
lence, appeared, and Moses the prophet is Moses the 
historian. 

It is a sound principle in jurisprudence that all law 
is based upon the previous conception of the necessity 
thereof, and that such law has either been violated or 
is capable of violation. Apply these simple principles 
to the great law of Mount Sinai, and with what result ? 
Tou discover the adaptation of these commandments 
to humanity every-where, encompassing us as the 
atmosphere does the earth, holding us in their grasp 
as gravitation does atoms and worlds, rewarding us 
for our virtues, punishing us for our vices. The 
strongest argument that these precepts originated with 
the Creator is in the sublime and terrible fact that 
their counterpart is written all over the constitu- 
tion of man. It is no marvel, therefore, that 
Jesus recos-nized this noble law and re-enacted these 



72 Supremacy of Law. 

commandments. When the rich ruler came to him 
and said, ''What shall I do to inherit eternal life?" 
the response was, "Keep the commandments;" Avhile 
he himself summarized the essence of the ten into 
two precepts — love for God and love for man. 

It may be true that the moral character of a legislator 
may be in dissonance with the spirit of the laws which 
he promulgates ; but it is an immense fact, reflective 
of his sincerity, when his character is above reproach 
and the morality of his life is in harmony therewith, 
Moses did not seek for wealth nor power nor glory, 
but he taught the most sublime and beneficent code 
of morals known to the world. 

Their marvelous comprehension and condensation 
is evidence of their divine source. The other great 
masters in the religious world have multiplied their 
precepts ; but here are these ten simple, beautiful 
rules of life, within whose approbation are all virtues 
and within whose reprobation are all vices. All these 
precepts have been violated and all have been obeyed. 
Their beneficence is as conspicuous as their authority. 
They constitute the rule of human character and of 
eternal destiny. Obedience thereto issues in the high- 
est virtue and the fullest happiness and the loftiest 
attainments of our common humanity. 

And how certain is the immortality of Moses ! 



The Pkomulgation of Law. 73 

Religious teachers who were contemporaneous with 
him, and those subsequent to him, are either forgotten 
or disregarded. The Jewish Commonwealth has passed 
away. The Pharaohs are mummies. Tlie Spliinxes 
are crumbling to decay. The Pyramids indicate the 
tooth of time. The splendid empire of the Romans 
has been divided into a thousand parts. Oblivion 
reigns, as it were, over that land, once the greatest in 
the history of the world. The Jews are scattered to 
the four winds. But rising out of all this ruin, stand- 
ing on the centuries of time, is this son of Jochebed 
and Amram, this shepherd of the desert, he who had 
had the courage to accept the invitation to stand on 
the burning summit of Sinai to receive from God the 
Ten Commandments. Except the name of Jesus what 
other name is grander in history? To-day eight 
hundred millions of people accept the story of the 
giving of the law on the Mount. The political 
principles therein contained are incorporated in the 
organic laws of Christendom, and the statesmen of our 
age are honest enough to confess their indebtedness 
to Moses more than to Blackstone or Austin, great a& 
are these masters of law. 

Then let us bow before this great fact. Let us 
receive it to our hearts. Let us remember that these 
simple precepts are binding upon us to keep them^ 



T4: Supremacy of Law. 

not because they are precepts, but because they 
represent the heart of God to man. And whenever 
you violate tliese mandates remember that you are 
bruising the heart of the Eternal. Remember that 
whenever you yield to temptation you are incurring a 
displeasure that cannot be atoned for, except by the 
vicarious blood of Jesus Christ our Lord. Print these 
precepts upon thy brow, write them upon the palm 
of thy hands, inscribe them upon thy heart. Let thy 
life be a Mount Sinai, ever standing amid its thunders, 
its lightnings, its sound of trumpets, feeling the 
earthquake power beneath you, and that you are ever 
in the presence of the Jehovah. And when you stand 
before him in judgment, and shall see written upon 
his throne these beautiful precepts, may your justifica- 
tion be, " All these have I kept from my youth up." 



The Mission of Law. T5 



III. 

THE MISSlOnsr OF LA"W. 

IT is the mission of the law to teacli, direct, conserve, 
deter and ennoble. And what is law ? With this 
question the master thinkers of the ages are in ac- 
cord. 

" Law signifies a rule of action and is applied indis- 
criminately to all kinds of action, whether animate or 
inanimate, rational or irrational." — Blackstone. 

" That which doth assign to each thing the kind, 
that which doth moderate the force of power, that 
which doth appoint the measure and form of working 
the same, we term law,^^ — Hooker, 

" Law defines the relations which exist between 
God and man, and between man and man." — 
Montesquieu, 

" Law is the science in which the greatest powers 
of the understanding are applied to the greatest num- 
ber of facts." — Johnson. 

" Law is beneficence acting by rule." — Burke, 

In our day law has a threefold application ; by 
the scientist, by the jurist, by the moralist. The 



TG Supremacy of Law. 

scientist applies the term with much latitude of mean- 
ing, and arranges his distinctions liberally under five 
heads. When applied to natural phenomena he 
means the process of cause and effect ; the force nec- 
essary to accomplish said effect ; the measure of the 
force requisite to produce that result ; the combina- 
tion of forces to fulfill a given purpose, as the 23ro- 
cession of the seasons, for the production of which 
there are forces astronomical, chemical, electrical, and 
geological ; and, ascending from these uniformities of 
nature to man's higher estate, he applies tlie term to 
the abstract conceptions of mind, formulated into 
axioms. Perhaps the time has come when the term 
law will not be applied to the processes of nature, 
but the better term will be employed, namely, the 
uniformities of nature. 

The sacred writers never apply the term law to 
inanimate things, but always to intelligent creatures. 
No higher compliment can be paid to law than this, 
which indicates its dignity, shows that it is an expres- 
sion of the Supreme Intelligence, and implies the resi- 
dent power of obedience and disobedience. The 
uniformities of nature are impartial, inexorable, 
changeless; they are for all time, so long as the pres- 
ent order and constitution of nature shall endure, and 
in their operation they are attended by consequences, 



The Mission of Law. 77 

not by penalties. A command differs from a uni- 
formity, as it implies authority, duty, sanction ; a 
command is issued from a superior who has the right 
to command, to an inferior who has the capacity to 
respond, with the power of election to obey or diso- 
bey. This better sense of law should receive uni- 
versal acceptance because of its simplicity, directness, 
and lofty mission. 

The conception of law by the jurist is the authori- 
tative expression of the legislative will, relating largely 
to rights and obligations, preventive and protective, 
in harmony w^itli nature, and in recognition of those 
principles fundamental in the cosmos, and those in- 
alienable rights which do not spring from social com- 
pact, or forms of government, or human devices, but 
which are found in the order of things. 

The moralist, using the language of the jurist in part, 
but rising from the human to the divine, defines law 
to be the authoritative expression of the legislative 
will of God to man, embracing authority, obligations, 
and sanctions in rewards, both in consequences and in 
penalties. 

In a general sense law is the manner in which an 
act shall be performed. In civil life it is a legislative 
declaration how a citizen shall act ; in morals it is a 
rule of conduct proceeding from one who has the right 



78 Supremacy of Law. 

to rule, and directed to those who have the ability to 
obey. In this sense laws are mandatory, prohibitory, 
permissive, according to the object to be obtained, 
commanding what shall be done, forbidding what shall 
not be done, permitting what may be done. 

There is an antagonism prevailing in our country 
and in other lands against the authority of these old 
mandates received by Moses from the hand of the 
Almiglity. It is difficult to understand that some 
who assert the uniformity of nature, or what 
they are pleased to call " material law," yet seek to 
emancipate themselves from moral obligation, which 
is natural law. They declare for absolute liberty ; 
that man should be governed by his own tastes, de- 
sires, and passions ; that he should gratify himself with- 
out interference from society or the restrictions of 
law. It is enough to say that man is not constituted 
for such conditions of liberty, for restraint seems to be 
as beneficial as law itself. Man is organized restric- 
tion, ever subject to consequences and penalties. He 
cannot pass a certain boundary without peril ; he is a 
living code of law. Unlimited gratification is the 
right of no man. Such is his constitution that man 
can think so far, can see so much, can eat and drink 
to such a degree, can sleep so long, endure so much, 
and beyond this he cannot go. He is ever within 



The Mission of Law. 79 

the embrace of law — " Thus far shalt thou go and no 
further." It is true of him in his worst and in his 
best estate. 

The law of limitation is as prevalent as law itself. 
Atoms and worlds, liquids and solids, plants and ani- 
mals are bounded by limitations. Flowers bloom, 
trees grow, fish swim, birds fly, beasts roam, light- 
nings flash, thunders peal, winds blow, oceans roll, all 
within limitations. The gem is crystallized, the dew- 
drop is molded, trees are carbonized, rocks metallized, 
clouds become rain, and the sun sends forth his wealth 
of health and beauty, all within limitations. 

Throw ofi this law of restriction, and the roots of 
the trees would take hold of the foundations of the 
earth and their branches would sweep the stars ; 
throw it off, and man's growth would be perpetuated 
until his brow reached the heavens. Throw it off, and 
the planets would rush in wildest confusion. Man is 
no exception in this higher nature ; excess is ruin. He 
must not encroach upon the domain of the Infinite. 
His vices are bounded by consequences and penalties. 
Excessive gratification multiplies his sorrows and 
hastens him to a premature grave. He is boundless 
in nothing but intelligence and virtue ; in these he 
can approach the Infinite, but never reach him. 
This is his highest ideal. Man hates restraint ; his 



so Supremacy of Law. 

foolish cry is, " Give us liberty or give ns death ; " 
but such liberty is without order. Natural liberty 
is acting without the restraints of nature; civil 
liberty is acting witli abridged natural freedom ; 
moral liberty is acting within the limitations of moral 
law. 

There is a difference between the power to disobey 
and the right to disobey. A citizen may have the 
power to take the property of another, but not the 
right. The dangerous classes demand unrestricted 
freedom, but they must not be indulged therein. A 
government strong to protect the innocent and punish 
the guilty is the stern necessity of the hour. There 
is a looseness of conscience throughout the world. It 
is largely the abuse of the spirit of our free institu- 
tions, the realization of the dream of liberty, that 
proud boast that we have emancipated so many mill- 
ions from the scepter of the monarch and the sword 
of the tyrant. But there will come a time when we 
shall call a halt all along the lines of humanity and 
say to each and to all, there is a higher law : ^' Thus 
far shalt thou go and no further." 

There is nothing more wholesome for a man to 
realize than the certainty of law, immutable, inflexi- 
ble, inexorable. Law is a Shylock ; the consequences 
of violation are sure to come. The effect must issue 



The Mission of Law. 81 

in the bitter end. '' Whatsoever a man soweth, that 
shall he also reap." 

There is notliing more majestic and solemn than the 
eternity of law. Human enactments are repealed, 
human obligations are for a term of years ; but the 
obligations of the law of God will last while he is on 
the throne of the universe. Pardon does not repeal 
law nor suspend it nor negative it. There is no such 
thing as pardon in his government ; when his law is 
violated suffering must be endured, either by the 
original offender or by an adequate substitute. 

In our aversion to restraint we are tempted to ask. 
Who is Jehovah, tliat we should obey ? What is 
the ground of obligation to him ? Civil government 
has authority over us because of the social relations 
which the Creator has established between man and 
man, and because of common consent ; parental au- 
thority springs from relationship, but God's authority 
has its source in absolute possession. He made us, 
and not we ourselves ; we are the offspring of his 
power — '^ Ye are not your own." Herein is the eter- 
nal fitness of things. From this is the greatest good. 
The power to enforce his commands may be the sub- 
ordinate reason for obedience, but it is not the high- 
est. A giant is not necessarily a ruler ; might is not 
right. We must look for a more beneficent reason. 



82 Supremacy of Law. 

Certain special duties may derive their apparent obli- 
gation from certain relations. Endowed with intelli- 
gence, I should adore God for his wonderful works. 
Possessing life, reason, and affections and other sources 
of happiness incident to my being, I owe him gratitude 
founded on natural sentiment and demanded by all that 
is reasonable. Dependent upon him from day to day for 
all the good I enjoy, conscious of the ennobling influ- 
ences of a Being so exalted, holy, wise, and good, I pray 
to the Father in heaven ; convinced that the ills of life 
are the chastisement from a gracious parent, that this 
life is to nnf old into another, I owe resignation to his 
will. But these relations are not necessarily the reason 
of obedience, nor does his right to rule me and my duty 
to obey him flow out of his will. Why has he the 
right to will me to do thus and thus ? But if we look a 
little deeper, a little closer, we shall discover that his 
right to will and my duty to obey are from his absolute 
possession. That right has no limitation. It can never 
be transferred, or alienated, or destroyed. " The heav- 
ens are thine, the earth also is thine : as for the world 
and the fulness thereof, thou hast founded them." 

It is a law of nations that the first discoverer of a 
country is esteemed the rightful possessor and lord 
thereof ; that the originator of a successful invention 
has imquestionable dominion of the property therein 



The Mission of Law. 83 

on the score of justice ; that the author of a benefi- 
cent truth, whether in the domain of science, govern- 
ment, or rehgion, has priority of claim to the honor 
and benefits thereof. These things have reached the 
majesty of international law ; hence the long and vexa- 
tious controversies touching the relative claims of 
Columbus and Amerigo Yespuci as to the discovery 
of this country ; the rival claims of Gutenburg and 
Faust touching the invention of the art of printing ; 
the first demonstration of the circulation of the blood, 
whether Harvey or Fabricius of Padua ; who first 
identified lightning and electricity, whether Abbe 
Nollet or our own Franklin, and whether Darwin or 
Wallace is the author of the theory of natural selec- 
tion. Men and nations have jealously guarded and 
vindicated this right of priority of claim ; for its 
maintenance battles have been fought and empires 
have toppled to their fall. When a man comes into 
the possession of a block of marble by discovery or 
presentation or purchase, and adds to its value by his 
deft fingers with mallet and chisel, and sculptures 
thereon some bird, or man, or angel, it is the consent 
of mankind that he has an additional claim to that 
piece of marble growing out of the right of possession 
and the success of his skill. '^ Thy hands have made 
me and fashioned me." 



84 Supremacy of Law. 

There can be no obligation where there is no au- 
thority, and there is no obligation where the authority 
is not made known. It is an old saying, " Where 
there is no law there is no sin." Obligation supposes 
the existence of authority, the endowment of capacity, 
a knowledge of the law. 

How beautiful is the mission of law ! Its benevo- 
lence is past finding out. So thouglit Hooker : " Of 
law there can be no less acknowledged than that her 
seat is in the bosom of God, her voice the harmony 
of the w^orld. All things in heaven and earth do her 
homage — the very least as feeling her care, the 
greatest as not exempt from her power ; both angels 
and men, and creatures of what condition soever, 
though each in different sort and manner, yet all 
with uniform consent, admiring her as the mother 
of their peace and joy." 

So thought Judge Story : " No one appreciates 
more fully than myself the general importance of the 
study of the law. ]N^o one places a higher value upon 
that science as the great instrument by which society 
is held together and the cause of public justice is 
maintained and vindicated. Without it neither lib- 
erty, nor property, nor life, nor that which is even 
dearer than life — a good reputation — is for a moment 
secure. It is, in short, the great elastic power which 



The Mission of Law. 85 

pervades and embraces every human relation. It links 
man to man by so many mutual ties and duties and de- 
pendencies that, though often silent and unseen in its 
operations, it becomes at once the minister to his social 
necessities and the guardian of his social virtues." 

Man is strongly prone to overlook the benefits 
thereof. It is a saying of Burke that law is benefi- 
cence acting by rule. It is no less good in what it 
forbids than in what it commands ; all its prohibitions 
promote the highest interests of society. It throws 
its muniments around life, marriage, property, repu- 
tation, home, and heaven. Every act of obedience 
adds to the perfection of man's moral nature ; it en- 
larges and ennobles. Obedience and happiness are 
inseparable. " The law is holy, . . . and just, and 
good." Law is God's face unveiled, the secret of his 
infinite heart revealed, a copy of the eternal mind, a 
transcript of tlie divine nature, fairest offspring of the 
everlasting Father, bright efflux of his essential wis- 
dom, visible beauty of the Most High, the original idea 
of truth and good lodged in his mind from the eternal 
ages. 

How benevolent the mission of law ! What a friend 
to the friendless ! What a strength to the weak ! What 
illumination to the darkened ! What inspiration to the 
dispirited ! How it lifts up humanity, ennobling man 



86 Supremacy of Law. 

with a realization that he is under obligation to tlie 
Highest and that he is bound to his throne by laws 
enacted for his immortal glory ! 

I can conceive of nothing more ennobling than 
law. I bow down before its majesty, I pay homage 
before its divine genius. To me it is a perpetual 
charm ; it is music to my soul. Its mission is to in- 
struct, to guide, to conserve, to discover action, to de- 
fine conduct and decide upon the character thereof. 
It is to determine the merit or demerit of every act ; 
its severity is kindness, the very prohibitions which 
have come from the throne of the Eternal are an ex- 
pression of the love of the Father Almighty. Every 
one is an expression of his kindness. Every one is a 
good Samaritan. Every one is an angel from the throne 
of heaven. Were they all observed the world would 
dismiss its ignorance, expel its sorrow, exclude disease, 
put a throbbing heart of life beneath the very ribs of 
death itself. All that is necessary for the immortal 
life of man on earth is to ascertain that law by which 
life can be continued, as in the olden time when men 
lived through a whole millennium. That law of im- 
mortal youth exists somewhere. It is yet to be dis- 
covered. It is not marvelous that David sang, 
" Blessed is the man whose delight is in the law of 
the Lord ; and in his law doth he meditate day and 



The Mission of Law. 87 

night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the 
rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his 
season ; his leaf also shall not wither ; and whatso- 
ever he doeth shall prosper." 

Christ knew that law and was obedient thereunto ; 
he said, " I am not come to destroy the law, but to ful- 
fill it." " Heaven and earth may pass away, but not 
one jot or tittle of it shall fail in me." He had the se- 
cret of perpetual health. He was never sick ; his 
intellect was never clouded, for his moral nature was 
not ruptured by disobedience. When shall we repro- 
duce him ? AVhen shall his great mission be consum- 
mated in us ? 

There are three mountains around which I wish to 
linger — Mount Sinai, on whose summit the law was re- 
enacted; Mount Calvary, whereon the law was vindi- 
cated ; Mount Tabor, on which the law was glorified. 
Sinai shall teach me my duty. Calvary shall impart to 
me strength. Tabor shall light up my path to the eter- 
nal heavens. 



88 Supremacy of Law. 



lY. 

THE LA^W OF KEVERENCE. 

REVERENCE is among the noblest and most 
useful virtues of our nature. It is a knightly 
trait. Its action is twofold — it ennobles him who re- 
veres and honors him who is revered. What charity 
is to humanity, patriotism to country, love to home, 
reverence is to all that is worthy of our esteem. Com- 
prehensive in its sweep, it includes veneration, admi- 
ration, adoration. It bears relation to superiority, to 
authority, to benefaction. In its largest sense it is 
veneration for antiquity. As the present is the out- 
growth of the past and the future is born of the pres- 
ent, reverence recalls the " Olden Time " with 
gratitude and delight. It is not possible for us to 
sever the present from the past without immense loss. 
We are the students at the feet of the greatest poets, 
greatest writers, greatest philosophers. There has 
been but one Homer, one Plato, one Cicero. With 
all its rapid strides the world has not outgrown its 
debt of gratitude to these illustrious names, nor has 
the luster thereof been eclipsed by their successors. 



The Law of Reverence. 89 

Standing forth in their supernal glory they challenge 
the best and greatest of to-day to enter the arena and 
compete for the prize. 

Reverence esteems seniority and pays homage to 
age. The Athenian youth were taught and were ac- 
customed to rise in the assembly when the aged en- 
tered. Would that this were the custom of to-day in 
our fair America. But, alas ! for the degeneracy of 
our times wherein we live, the venerable and the aged 
are expected to do obeisance to the beardless and the 
brainless. Wisdom belongs to age. Experience is 
accumulated knowledge, and while it is the dearest 
it is the best of human teachers. Reverence regards 
the household with affection and embalms in the 
sweetest flowers of domestic love that inspired sayings 
" Honor thy father and tliy mother." Honor thy 
father because he is thy father, honor thy mother be- 
cause she is thy mother. Parental imbecility is no 
excuse for filial irreverence. He who treats with dis- 
respect a parent merits public denunciation. The 
children of America could learn from the heathen 
Chinese parental respect, and it would not be alto- 
gether unprofitable, either, for the parents of America 
to send their children to school in China, if for no 
other purpose than to learn obedience. 

Reverence is the expression of gratitude due a 



90 Supremacy of Law. 

benefactor, whether human or divine. Wherever 
good has been expressed or bestowed there the emotions 
of gratitude should flow, and no stinted recognition 
of indebtedness should be given. Ingratitude breeds 
irreverence, irreverence impiety, impiety a blasted 
manhood. Reverence bows in homage before the 
majesty of authority, before the authority of law. It 
is not for the citizen to inquire whether the law is 
good or bad. It is enough that it is the law of the 
land, whether that law is born of the right of posses- 
sion or flows from human consent or the compact of 
government. If the law is bad, let it be properly re- 
pealed, but so long as it bears the seal and sanction of 
the majority of the people the citizen should bow in 
reverence before it. This is a lesson we have yet to 
learn as a people. Here and there are bright exam- 
ples of the appreciation of authority ; but what is needed 
at this time is an assertion of the authority of law 
because it is the legislative will of the people, and that, 
as such, it must be obeyed at all hazards ; that it is not 
to be prostituted, nor evaded, nor ignored, but to be 
obeyed ; and to maintain the authority of government 
and the majesty of the law every gun in the navy and 
every soldier in the army should be brought into 
requisition. 

Reverence takes cognizance of superiority of station. 



The Law of Reverence. 91 

The administrator of law is not only the representa- 
tive of the same, but of the will of the people, and 
in a high sense is the representative of the Infinite 
Sovereign of the universe. By common consent men 
have agreed that the person of a ruler is sacred. 
He may be unworthy of the plaudits and respect of 
the people in his personal character ; nevertheless, for 
the benefit of community, for the benefactions 
issuing from the respect due such a person, men every- 
where have said that the person of a ruler shall be 
treated with respect. 

I have seen the Sultan of Turkey ride through the 
streets of Constantinople on his magnificent charger 
to the Mosque of Eyoub, to gird on the sword of 
state, while the multitudes prostrated themselves in 
the dust before him. Standing in the city of Rome 
1 have seen gentle women and elegant men fall down 
in the slush of the streets as the Sovereign Ponthff 
passed in his royal carriage from palace to palace. I 
have seen the Czar of Russia — autocrat though he is re- 
garded — receive the homage of his subjects, when fifty 
thousand Russians uncovered as his Imperial Majesty 
passed. Of the personality of these rulers, whether 
worthy or unworthy, I say nothing, but speak of the 
innate conviction of mankind, that reverence is due 
authority. The Highest has said " Thou shalt not 



92 Supremacy of Law. 

speak evil of the ruler of thy people." Whether the 
chief magistrate of this republic is of one party or of 
another he is entitled to the highest respect as the 
representative of the American people, and the citi- 
zen should be esteemed a criminal who, by voice or 
by pen, shall speak irreverently of the President of 
the United States. 

Three of the ten commandments are personal. 
The first is, " Thou shalt have no other gods before 
me," of which we have spoken in a former chapter. 
The second is, " Thou shalt not make unto thee any 
graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in 
heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that 
is in the water under the earth ; " which is a prohibi- 
tion against the formation of any attempted similitude 
of the Creator, of wood, of clay, of stone, of iron, of 
brass, of silver or of gold ; for he is without body and 
without parts, the heavens cannot contain him. There 
can be no representation of him, as there was none 
when he gave the law on Mount Sinai. He thereby 
limits the mission of the artist, whether by the pencil 
or the chisel, that he shall not presume to represent 
the Almighty. This is not a condemnation of art, as 
held by Mohammed and as taught by Philo, the 
learned Jew of Alexandria, Egypt, and as asserted by 
some modei-n infidels. Art has an ennobling mission 



The Law of Reverence. 93 

to embody the most beautiful traits of tlie human 
character, to express the loftiest sentiments of the 
human mind, to convey to us the characteristics of the 
Saviour divine. 

There is an innocent and beautiful Cliristian art 
which has a beneficent mission of rare power of rep- 
resentation, depth of sentiment, lofty expression, of 
historic facts, of noble attributes, and of divine 
graces. Art is embodied thouglit. God created the 
sculptor and the painter for a holy mission. The 
glory, the nimbus, and aureole are symbols of light 
and sanctity. The dolphin is the symbol of the apos- 
tles, of Christians, and of baptism. The lamb is the 
symbol of Christ's gentleness, the lion of his courage, 
and the pelican of his sufferings ; the latter tears open 
her breast to feed her young with her own blood. 
The olive is the emblem of peace, the lily of purity, 
the palm of triumph. Christian art has a high mis- 
sion to represent duty, truth, and sensibility, which 
a-waken within the soul corresponding sentiments and 
feelings. I am j ustified. in this assertion by the fact 
that Solomon's temple was formed after a divine pat- 
tern. And in that holiest of all temples there were 
carv^ed flowers of cedar-wood, two cherubim of the 
same material eighteen feet high, with wings eighteen 
feet from tip to tip, covered with gold. And on the 



94 Supremacy of Law. 

walls were carved in relievo figures of cherubim, flow- 
ers, and palm-trees. And within that glorious house 
was a molten sea, eighteen feet in diameter and nine 
feet high, resting upon twelve oxen, three facing each 
point of the compass, and ornamented with a border 
of oxen and cherubim. 

The mission of the artist is as vast as nature and co- 
extensive with human history. He is to place before 
us the ideal, the historical, and the biographical, and 
is to appeal to all that is noble and refined in the hu- 
man mind. Take, for instance, Thorwaldsen's statue 
of Christ, now in the little church of Santa Martina, 
near the forum of Rome. It is the sculptor's concep- 
tion of the man Christ Jesus, which is the most mar- 
velous work of the kind ever produced. Stand before 
it, and it wooes you by its gentleness, it awes you by 
its majesty. It is a sublime combination of dignity 
and benevolence. The figure is colossal and the atti- 
tude commanding. The hands are outspread in the 
act of blessing and the head inclined forward as if 
looking upon the object of benefaction. The head is 
large and well-balanced. The hair is parted in the 
center and is thick and flowing. The features are 
manly and the countenance expressive of wisdom, 
self-possession, and benevolence. It is Christ in the 
glory of his young manhood. 



The Law of Reverence. 95 

Take Guido's famous picture of " Hope," now in one 
of tlie palaces of Rome. The artist has seized the 
transitional moment when the mind is passing from 
despair to hope. The tear is yet on the cheek, while 
the smile lights up the whole face. 

Take Raphael's representation of the " Transfigura- 
tion," the last and greatest picture of that immortal 
master, and justly considered the first oil painting in 
the world. It now adorns the Vatican, renowned for 
its works of art. It is a combination of shame and 
glory, of misery and happiness. How grand that 
picture ! — the opening heavens, the descending proph- 
ets, the sleeping apostles, the Saviour crowned with 
glory. At the base of Tabor are the afilicted father, 
with his more afilicted son, the excited crowd, and the 
unbelieving apostles, all awaiting the coming of the 
Lord. "What could bring to the mind more vividly 
those great truths than that great masterpiece of the 
genius of Raphael ? 

Art has a high mission. It is divine, yet, like 
every great and good gift, it is abused. Its nudeness 
is an offense against Christian decency. Christian men 
and women should every -where frown upon this abuse 
with withering condemnation. The design is to ex- 
cite the baser passions. No apology can be offered to 
justify this unholy gratification. No refinement of 



D6 Supremacy of Law. 

taste, however exquisite, can be offered in justification, 
for the sight of the eye affects the mind. In vain 
do men plead, " Unto the pure all things are pure." 
Some suppose this means that a very pure man will 
never see impurity in any object — a sentiment which 
is as absurd as if vice were not vicious to a pure man's 
eye. Immorality before such a person is immorality. 
The text means : " Every thing that belongs to a 
pure man is pure, but nothing that belongs to the 
defiled and unbelieving is pure ; even their mind and 
conscience are defiled." A pure man would not pos- 
sess a Yenus of Titian. Such a picture is not high 
art. Such creations of genius reflect no honor on 
Christian homes. They are libidinous ; they excite 
the lowest passions of the young. Such filthy sub- 
jects as ''Leda and the Swan," "Danae," ^^ Venus and 
Adonis " are defiling. The French school of art has 
a facility for putting vice forward in voluptuous and 
attractive forms to the young while the moral is hid- 
den in the corner. Besides the seductive influences 
of such obscenities upon the young, every nude- 
pictured female, presupposes a nude real female sit- 
ting before an artist as his model. Shall we adopt 
Greek culture in the place of Christian ethics ? Shall 
we make indecencies fashionable ? Shall we prosti- 
tute art and make it minister to vice instead of virtue ? 



The Law of Reverence. 97 

If the second commandment condemns art at all 
it is that art from which flows impurity. But the 
intent of the second commandment is to prohibit the 
creation of an image of any thing to be worshiped or 
to represent the true object of worship. It contains 
two prohibitions : " Thou shalt not make," and " Thou 
shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve " 
what thou hast made. There is a diflEerence between 
a graven image and a likeness. These terms are not 
tautological. Some say that the distinction is made 
between an idol, which is nothing, which has no real- 
ity in the universe, and a beast or bird, which may be 
enshrined for worship. Others suppose that the differ- 
ence between these expressions is the difference 
hetween the seen and the unseen, as the bird and the 
beast are seen, but God is the unseen. " Thou shalt 
not make unto thee any graven image," an engraving, 
" or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, 
or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water 
under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself 
to them nor serve them." The great God cannot be 
symbolized. He did not appear on Horeb in a figure 
or in an image. Thus we have in Deuteronomy, 
chapter iv : 

" Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves ; for 

ye saw no manner of similitude on the day that the 
7 



98 Supremacy of Law. 

Lord spake unto you in Horeb out of the midst of 
the fire ; 

" Lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven 
image, the similitude of any figure, the Hkeness of 
male or female, 

'' The likeness of any beast that is on the earth, the 
likeness of any winged fowl that flieth in the air, 

" The likeness of any thing that creepeth on the 
ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the waters 
beneath the earth : 

" And lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and 
when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, 
even all the host of heaven, shouldest be driven to 
worship them, and serve them, which the Lord thy 
God hath divided unto all nations under the whole 
heaven. 

'' But the Lord hath taken you, and brought you 
forth out of the iron furnace, even out of Egypt, to be 
unto him a people of inheritance, as ye are this day." 

It is said in 2 Chronicles respecting Manasseh, for 
which he is condemned: "And he set a carved im- 
age, the idol which he had made, in the house of God, 
of which God had said to David and to Solomon his 
son. In this house and in Jerusalem, which I have 
chosen before all the tribes of Israel, will I put my 
name forever." 



The Law of Reverence. 99 

How often and how hard men have tried to pro- 
duce a representation of God ! Prior to the twelfth 
century the artist represented Jehovah under the sym- 
bol of the palm of a hand, issuing out of the clouds 
— seen in pictures of the Baptism, the Agony, the 
Crucifixion, and the Ascension of Christ — the hand 
opened in the act of benediction to welcome Jesus to 
his throne in glory. Then the face of God was 
painted in the clouds, surrounded by a halo of glory. 
Kext the artist delineated a bust, then the whole fig- 
ure. And finally, at the end of the fourteenth cent- 
ury, the Romish artist represented God the Father as 
a venerable man with a triple crown upon his brow^ 
illustrative of his sovereignty over heaven, earthy 
and hell. 

God said to the Hebrews : " I did not appear before 
you under any similitude. I have given you no con- 
ception nor idea of my person. You cannot embody 
me in stone. You cannot paint me on canvas. You 
cannot cast me in bronze. I am ubiquitous. I am 
without body, without parts, without form ; therefore 
do not attempt a representation of me, for the effort 
will be a failure." 

This law also prohibits the creation of a likeness of 
any thing in three worlds to be the object of worship. 
It is an old legal maxim that " all law is based upon a 



100 Supremacy of Law. 

previous conception of the necessity for the same, and 
supposes tlie actual or possible existence of the evils 
therein forbidden." So the Almighty gave this com- 
mandment in recognition of these great principles. 
Looking down through the coming ages he foresaw the 
tendency of man to worship an image. You cannot 
think of any thing in the sky, in the air, in the water, in 
the earth, that man has not embodied in clay, or wood, 
or stone, or brass, or silver, or gold, and worshiped. 
The pantheon of idolatry is a universe in miniature. 

The third personal mandate is, " Thou shalt not 
take the name of the Lord thy Grod in vain : for the 
Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name 
in vain." This command is susceptible of a threefold 
violation : by sacrilege, by blasphemy, by profanity. 
Sacrilege is the desecration of things sacred to the 
Almighty. This was the oflEense of Belshazzar when 
he sent to the temple of Belus and removed therefrom 
the golden vessels which had been carried away from 
the temple in Jerusalem, and out of the golden cups he 
and his princes drank wine to the gods of Babylonia ; 
and to rebuke this sacrilegious act the hand of God 
appeared on the wall of the banqueting hall, " Mene, 
mene, Tekel, Upharsin." It was sacrilege when the 
money-changers made the temple of Jerusalem a den 
of thieves, and lipd driven their oxen therein — within 



The Law of Reverence. 101 

the sacred precincts — and brought the doves for sacri- 
fice within the holy place. Rising in the indignation 
of a great reformer to restore an ancient rehgion to 
purity and power, the Master drove out the oxen, and 
in the confusion the tables of the money-changers 
were overthrown. It was sacrilege when Simon 
Magus proposed to enter the Christian ministry by the 
offer of a large sum of money, thereby desecrating 
the holiest calling among men, and to secure for him- 
self the miraculous power which he had seen exercised 
by Peter and Jolm. Sacrilege is the desecration of 
whatever is sacred to liuman love. All civilized peo- 
ples have esteemed the grave-yard sacred as a sanctu- 
ary because it is the place of buried affections. Upon 
the fagade of every temple dedicated to the true and 
living God is inscribed these exalted words: " Holiness 
becometh thine house, O Lord, for ever." It is a 
place where his name is recorded, where his honor 
dwells, where his presence is manifested, and where 
the most reverential aspect should be displayed, the 
most reverential thoughts entertained, the most rev- 
erential spirit cherished. 

Blasphemy is the ill-treatment of the person of God. 
It is the aspersion of his glorious character, it is the 
denial of his existence, it is the attempt to alienate 
the affections of his friends from his person and liis 



102 SUPKEMACY OF LaW. 

tlirone. Blaspliemj is committed when his provi- 
dence is held in contempt, his attributes depreciated, 
his creation set at naught, his wisdom ridiculed, and 
his claims treated with scorn. 

Blasphemy relates immediately to the person of 
the Creator. Old England, grand in her religious 
history, has enacted a law for the punishment of the 
blasphemer, because his act is an insult to the majesty 
of heaven. In her jurisprudence she has recognized 
God's right to the worship of mankind, and that nations 
are the defenders of that right. In some of our own 
States there are enactments corresponding to this 
English law. Such legislation is the highest w^isdom 
and the simplest duty, for he who speaks evil of the 
Creator should be considered a criminal against soci- 
ety and a sinner against heaven. There is nothing so 
shocking to refined taste as to listen to words de- 
structive of our reverence for the personal character 
of the Almighty. It is particeps criminis to lend 
the ear to a notorious blasphemer, born of hell, 
whose chief mission is to pour contempt upon that 
supreme and glorious Being who has brought us into 
existence and preserved us by his benefactions. One 
could go to the judgment with greater hope of escape 
with any other sin upon his soul than to have loaned 
his presence and paid his money to hear his Creator 



The Law of Reverence. 103 

cursed and made the butt of ridicule amid the ribald 
laughter of infidels. 

In the exaltation of his glorious person he is far 
beyond the insults of his creatures. His empire is 
the universe ; his dominion is over all the works of 
his hands ; his power is without limit, the heaven of 
heavens cannot contain him; he numbers the stars 
and calls them by name ; he speaks and it is done ; 
he binds the sweet influences of the Pleiades and looses 
the bands of Orion ; he brings forth Mazzaroth in his 
season and guides Arcturus with his sons. He ex- 
claims to men and angels, " If I were hungry I would 
not tell thee." All things are his, whether on earth 
or in heaven. He does not demand our reverence 
because it would add to his glory, but because of the 
reflex influence on the reverential mind and upon 
his intelligent creation. Our prayers, our hymns, our 
sacraments are not for him, but for ourselves. To 
reverence his glorious person is to exalt our own 
condition. How profound the reverence of Christ 
for the person of his divine Father ! "What feelings 
of obedience, what entireness of consecration, what 
unfailing loyalty he displayed ! Man values a good 
name because of the rights which belong thereto. 
God has higher reasons for this demand : the beneflts 
which shall accrue to the devout and reverential. 



104 Supremacy of Law. 

Every word is emphatic in the old Hebrew law for 
the protection of the divine name. " Thou shalt not 
take " — that is, to bear, to lift up, to mention ; '' Thou 
shalt not take the name'^^ — that is, the designation by 
which God is known — his name cannot be separated 
from his person ; " Thou shalt not take the name . . • 
in vain " — that is, thou shalt not use his name for a vile 
or useless or evil purpose ; thou shalt not use it to 
the injury of another, nor use it lightly or irrever- 
ently, for he who does shall not be held guiltless — 
that is, shall not be regarded innocent. 

There are three ways in which men profane the 
name of God : by false oaths, by useless oaths, and 
by profane oaths. An oath is an appeal to the Al- 
mighty that a statement made is true, that a promise 
given will be performed, and in attestation of the in- 
nocency and sincerity of the deponent an appeal is 
made to God as an omnipresent witness. It is a 
solemn invocation to witness the uprightness of the 
deponent's intention and the conscious ability to 
perform the oath recorded. 

The theory of an oath is that while men will natu- 
rally speak the truth, yet, in attestation of their sin- 
cerity, they invoke his justice and wrath and punish- 
ment upon the offender. There are times in a man's 
life when an immediate evil seems available by 



The Law of Reverence. 105^ 

swearing falsely ; hence men are under tremendous 
temptations by the prospect of immediate good, and 
for the sake of the avoidance of impending evil they 
are willing even to call God to witness to a lie and to 
invoke his wrath upon them. 

There can be no doubt but that an oath is indispen- 
sable to the administration of human justice and to 
the well-being of society, especially in view of man's 
depravity and the strong inducements to swear falsely ; 
hence society has created what is known as perjury. 
I say " created," for perjury is a human creation, sug- 
gested by the divine prohibition. In some countries 
both the witness and the criminal are tortured, that 
the truth may be extorted. But in civilized countries- 
the oath is instituted as the test of one's sincerity, and 
perjury is regarded a crime, in view of the present 
condition of society. The oath is a necessity both for 
the protection of the innocent and the punishment of 
the guilty. Civil government has therefore aright to 
create such a crime — that is, to designate a certain act 
called perjury, and to punish it accordingly. 

And what is the prevalent cause of this crime 
against the honor and rights of society ? Primarily, 
the multitude of oaths instituted by civil authority to 
attest the sincerity of the deponent. Oaths are so 
frequent now that whenever man is called to depose 



106 Supremacy of Law. 

he is required to swear by the attributes of the eternal 
God. When one is inducted into a petty office or 
called to certify the truth of a transaction he is re- 
quired to make a solemn appeal to the Creator. It is 
not too much, therefore, to charge this abuse upon 
civil government. An oath should be of rare occur- 
rence, and only on occasions of the most solemn im- 
port, when the crimes of murder and treason are 
charged, or when the solemnity of the occasion de- 
mands such an appeal. 

For nine tenths of the oaths there should be sub- 
stituted a signature or solemn affirmation, to which 
should be affixed penalties corresponding to those 
now attached to the crime of perjury. Doubtless 
the prevalence of this crime is due to the irreverent 
manner in which oaths are administered. Go into 
your courts of justice, and not unfrequently the ad- 
ministrator is a bloated debauchee ; go to the polls on 
election day and observe the irreverence of the ad- 
ministration. It is no wonder, therefore, that God is 
brought into contempt and his name treated liglitly. 
It is not possible for ns to estimate the punishment 
due such an offense. He who calls God to witness to 
a lie and to his deep liypocrisy, and with his polluted 
lips will say " so help me God," will receive swift 
destruction that w^ill roll over his falsified spirit like 



The Law of Reverence. 107 

a sea of fire fanned with the wings of a tempest, 
when God in his wrath shall rise and j^our forth liis 
fury on the perjured soul. 

Whenever the name of God is used for an evil 
purpose it is irreverence. One man can impose upon 
another and the awful name of Jehovah is invoked 
for tlie consummation of the evil deed. History is 
full of illustrations : Pope Urban and Peter the Her- 
mit called all Europe to arms in the name of God, to 
fall like an avalanche upon the defenseless people of 
Palestine, to rescue an empty sepulcher from the 
hands of the Turks ; but the storm of wrath came at 
last when Saladin the Great, on the battle-field of 
Kurun-Hattin, near the Mount of Beatitudes, rose in 
the strength of the true God and swept the Cru- 
saders from tlie Promised Land. When Madame 
"Roland ascended the scaffold in Paris to be beheaded 
she exclaimed, '* O, Liberty, what crimes are com- 
mitted in thy name ! " So all history cries out, '^ O, 
God, what crimes have been committed in thy name ! " 

How terrible the persecutions on the rack, at the 
stake, in the Inquisition, which have been instituted 
in the name of Christ. 

And this irreverence of God's name is seen in the 
useless oaths of every-day life. Among the Jews 
oaths were botli private and judicial. Some were 



108 Supremacy of Law. 

of a purely voluntary character. Abram took two 
oaths ; one to rescue his nephew Lot from the hands 
of his captors, and anotlier that he would not par- 
take of the spoils of war : '^ and Abram said to the 
king of Sodom, I have lifted up mine hand unto the 
Lord, the most high God, the possessor of heaven and 
earth, that I will not take from a thread even to a shoe- 
latchet, and that I will not take any thing that is thine, 
lest thou shouldest say, I have made Abram rich : 
save only that which the young men have eaten, and 
the portion of the men which went with me, Aner, 
Eshcol, and Mamre ; let them take their portion." 
Gen. xiv, 22-24. So at Beersheba (which signifies 
the well of the oath) he made an alliance with King 
Abimelech. Years after Joseph took an oath to his 
dying father that his body should be borne from the 
land of the Pharaohs and deposited in the cave of 
Machpelah. It is also recorded in the book of Hebrews 
that God himself once took an oath to Abraham, when 
he swore by himself, because there was none greater 
by whom to swear. 

" For when God made promise to Abraham, 
because he could swear by no greater, he sware by 
himself, saying. Surely blessing I will bless thee, and 
multiplying I will multiply thee." Heb. vi, l-i. 
But there was a time in the history of the Jews when 



The Law of IIeverence. 109 

private oaths culminated in irreverence by the 
frequent use of the name of the Most Higli ; lience 
the reproof of one of the prophets : ^^ Because of 
swearing the land mourneth." In the days of the 
Saviour the oath became irreverently frequent, and in 
his Sermon on the Mount he reproved the evil : 

'^ Again, ye liave heard that it hatli been said by 
them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but 
shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths : 

" But I say unto you. Swear not at all ; neither by 
heaven ; for it is God's tlirone : 

" Nor by the earth ; for it is his footstool : neither 
by Jerusalem ; for it is the city of the great King. 

^^ Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because 
thou canst not make one hair white or black. 

'' But let your communication be, Yea, yea ; Nay, 
nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of 
evil." Matt, v, 33-37. 

But in this tlie Saviour does not condemn 
private and judicial oaths, when taken on solemn 
occasions and for a noble purpose. His condemnation 
is against useless swearing, as, when a man might 
swear that white is white, or marble is marble; 
that he will give his head if a certain promise is not 
kept ; that he will give his life if a given pledge is 
not redeemed. What evils come from this useless 



110 Supremacy of Law. 

swearing ! It is not done with a kiss on the Bible, 
nor always with a solemn appeal to God, but in a 
light and trifling manner, under the impression that 
the words so spoken will be more highly esteemed. 

There is a third violation of this old law in what 
is called profanity — characteristic of all nations, 
of all ages, of all conditions in society. Some 
divines ascribe tliis universal habit to depravity ; but 
all depraved men are not profane. We must look for 
other causes. It is largely attributable to poverty of 
language. Forcible emotions demand forcible ex- 
pressions ; intense passions seek utterance in intense 
language. When the passions are deep and aroused, 
when a man's temper burns like a mountain on fire, 
then words are inadequate to express his excited 
emotions. He appeals to hell, with its infernal 
agencies, to heaven, with its glorious thrones, to eter- 
nity, with its unnumbered centuries, to God, in his 
awful majesty. Apparently only these extraordinary 
terms seem to satisfy the extraordinary temper of his 
soul. Like the barking of a dog, the roaring of a lion, 
the braying of an ass, he gives forth sounds which 
have no logical expression. It is a fact that in the 
positive part of our nature the voice rises with the 
passions and the passions with the voice. Wesley knew 
this, and requested his brethren, in the transaction 



The Law of Reverence. Ill 

of ecclesiastical business, to speak in whispers. Men 
remarkable for their profanity give evidence of their 
poverty of language in their constrained silence when 
in decent society, who, among boon companions, give 
full vent to their profane vocabulary in the most 
flippant manner. 

And how many are the evils of this prevalent social 
vice ! It destroys good taste, which naturally belongs 
to an accomplished gentleman ; it is subversive of 
self-control. He is a slave to his passions who is a 
slave to his voice. Profanity is largely a fashion ; the 
young learn from the old. The beautiful boy who 
has been reared in the lap of piety, whose mother 
taught him to sing his vesper hymn and offer his 
matin prayer, follows the prevalent custom when, for 
the first time, he hears a profane oath ; in process 
of time his profanity becomes a habit of his soul, and 
thus vice is handed down from generation to genera- 
tion. Better that men would swear to the silent 
heavens or respond to the thunder than to swear in 
the presence of sweet childhood. 

How vast are the motives against this social vice ! 
God has said, " I will not hold him guiltless that 
taketh my name in vain.'' This prohibition is benev- 
olence acting by law ; it is for man's sake. When the 
last profane tongue is silent in the grave, and the 



112 Supremacy of Law. 

soul that used it is with the lost, then the glorious 
God will live surrounded by the highest hierarchy of 
angels ; cherubim will fold their wings in reverence 
to cover their faces in his presence, and will banquet 
his ear with songs of praise. "While he cannot be per- 
sonally affected by the language of the profane, yet 
profanity traduces the soul, wrecks the stamina of our 
moral being, corrupts the fountain of life. "What 
blessings are promised to the reverent : " I will set 
liim on high because he hath known my name." 
And towering above all these considerations is the 
sublime fact that reverence for God's name is the 
foundation of all virtue. ''The fear of the Lord is 
the beginning of wisdom ; " it is the supreme reason 
-of virtue. Profanity is the abuse of the exalted 
mission of language. Language is the undying histo- 
rian of the grandest thoughts of humanity; language 
embodies the scientific thought of the ages and 
embalms the poetic genius of the illustrious past, that 
soothes the soul with its delightful aroma. Language 
is the medium of communication between God and 
man. Language is given for the noblest purposes — 
to instruct the intellect, to educate the conscience, 
to elevate the feelings, to exalt life, to express our 
devotions to God. 

The Turks were wont to illustrate the power of the 



Tfie Law of IIeverence. 113 

name of Allah upon the character and destiny of the 
young. One of their kings summoned to his presence 
his three sons, and before them placed three sealed 
urns. One urn was of gold, another of amber, the 
third of clay. The king invited his oldest son to 
clioose which urn he thought the greatest treasure. 
Choosing the vase of gold, on which was written the 
word "" empire," he found it full of the blood of those 
slain in war. The second son chose the vase of amber, 
Avhereon was written the w^ord, "glory," but within 
were the ashes of those great men who had created a 
sensation in the world. The third son took the re- 
maining vase, which he found empty, but on the 
inside (by order of the king) the potter had inscribed 
the name of God. The king demanded of his wise 
men w^hich of the three vases weighed the most. Tlie 
men of ambition said, the vase of gold ; tlie courtiers 
answered, the vase of amber ; while the sages declared 
for the vase of clay that bore the name of Allah. 

^' Hallowed be thy name." 
8 



114 Supremacy of Law. 



THE LA^W OF REST. 

INDUSTKY is a boon to man. Work is devotion. 
Labor is obedient to the constitution of nature, 
whether the activity of the mind or the exercise of 
the muscles. Indolence is attended with a long train 
of personal, domestic, social, and national evils, while 
industry is promotive of health, wealth, and happi- 
ness. Without application it were not possible for us 
to advance in the path of civilization. The intellect- 
ual attainments of our day are the glory of the toilers 
by day and the toilers by night. The men who ac- 
complish most for humanity have been the greatest 
workers. It is one of the sad mistakes of our times 
to divide mankind into two classes and to give the 
honorable title of " working-classes " exclusively to 
those who are muscle-toilers. Men who labor with 
the brain are members of the same honorable frater- 
nity. He whose labor is physical has it far easier 
than he who is ever on the mental strain. The day- 
laborer accomplishes his task, repairs to his home, re- 
ceives his evening repast, says his prayers, and retires 



The Law of Rest. 115 

to sound sleep ; while the brainy man not iinf requent- 
ly spends his nights in thoughts on the morrow. If 
the opinion prevails that the man who is at the head 
of great establishments, employing thousands of op- 
eratives, and wielding immense wealth, is the most 
restful man in the world, the impression is a fallacy 
and is born of ignorance. The most anxious men in 
society are the men of brains. 

It is an old law for the race that " He that will not 
work, neither shall he eat." It is not optional with 
a man whether he shall obey this law or not. There 
is as much holiness in working six days in the week 
as there is in resting on the seventh day. 

Indolence is the curse of man, and is reprobated by 
the Almighty. It is a mistake to suppose that man 
can ever be in such a position, financially or socially, 
as to relieve himself from the obligations of activity. 
Wealth is no excuse, fashion is no apology. It is a 
man's solemn and religious duty to be active for him- 
self and for others, and these activities run through 
the six days of the week. There is but little preju- 
dice against those who belong to what is known as 
the '^ higher classes of society " if they obey this law : 
but that which provokes those known as the "labor- 
ing classes " is to see these men of fortune wrapped 
in the selfishness of wealth, spending their money for 



116 Supremacy of Law. 

the gratification of their hists and passions, with an 
ntter disregard for the comfort of the suffering and 
the needy. 

We can recall persons that are millionaires who re- 
ceive the benedictions of the poor every day, and we 
can recall the millionaires who are damned by the 
poor every night. The prejudice is not against wealth, 
but against the abuse of it. Humanity instinctively 
hates selfishness, and to-day the war is not against 
capital, but against the prostitution of capital for the 
gratification of selfishness. When those who have 
been thus favored shall realize this fact, they will be- 
come the benefactors of mankind and the poor will 
bless them. 

Rest is essential. The human body is a clock to 
run six days. Its wonderful machinery is constructed 
on mathematical principles of time, bounded on every 
hand by the law of limitation. The Creator could 
have constructed a human machine to run ten days, 
as the French supposed he had. He determined that 
there should be so many rest-days in every calendar 
year. 

The planets mark the days, the months, the years ; 
but God reserved to himself the right to give a sep- 
tenary law to man, and that it might come with 
greater force, that its majesty might be more apparent, 



The Law of Rest. 117 

that its benevolence might flow from his own heart, 
he said : " Let tliere be lights in the firmament of 
the heaven to divide the day from the night ; and let 
them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and 
years : and let them be for lights in the firmament 
of heaven, to give light upon the earth : and it was 
60." These heavenly time-keepers indicate the other 
divisions of time, but they give no indications of the 
week. There are astronomical causes for the day, the 
revolution of the earth upon its axis ; for the month, 
the passage of the moon from one point of the heavens 
to that same point again ; for the year, the movement 
of the sun through the twelve signs of the eclip- 
tic. But the division of time into weeks — periods of 
seven days — has no foundation in any known or visi- 
ble septenary change in nature. It is a purely arbi- 
trary division of time and is coeval with the history 
of our race. Its first mention is in connection with 
creation, and is not again mentioned for sixteen cent- 
uries, till the days of Noah, who on the seventh day 
sent forth the dove from the ark. Six hundred years 
thereafter it is spoken of in connection with the mar- 
riage ceremonies of Jacob and Leah, and from that 
time on to the present it has blessed mankind. 

Investigations have demonstrated the existence of 
this septennial law. The British Parliament in 1832 



118 Supremacy of Law. 

appointed a committee, with Sir Robert Peel as chair- 
man, to investigate two facts : whether men who 
labor six days in a week are healthier and live longer 
than those who labor seven ; whether they will do 
more work and in better manner. Experiment was 
made on two thousand men through a series of years, 
who were required to work seven days in the week. 
To render them contented, each man received double 
pay for his Sunday work. Two evils followed — phys- 
ical exhaustion and spiritual demoralization. This 
law is also applicable to the animal creation, and holds 
good as to beasts of burden. It has been tested on a 
hundred horses w^hich were w^orked ten consecutive 
months in the year, each day in the month, and then 
allowed to rest two months in succession, and that 
continuously ; and on a hundred horses which were re- 
quired to work six days in the week and were allowed 
to rest on the seventh ; and it was found that the lat- 
ter produced one ninth more valuable services. So 
this septennial law seems to run through the whole 
creation and is as applicable to inanimate matter as 
to man and beast. A great chemist has discovered 
its applicability to a bar of iron. Take, for instance, 
a clipping from a rail of iron or steel. At the 
moment of use place it immediately under a micro- 
scope and you will see that the particles have been 



The Law of Rest. 119 

disintegrated, cohesion has been lessened. But watch 
those particles under the microscope aiid you will see 
that they re-adjust themselves as they regain tlieir co- 
hesion and tenacity. The constant jarring and fric- 
tion cause the metal to lose its tenacity, to become 
brittle, and to disintegrate ; but rest will restore the 
equilibrium of the disturbed parts. 

This great law is true of man intellectually. The 
mind must rest. It was the profound remark of 
Aristotle that the end of labor is leisure. Intensity 
of work, with little regard to the needs thereof, is in 
our days exalted to a virtue. The exercise of our 
mental faculties is necessary to our highest enjoy- 
ment; but there is a bound beyond which mind can- 
not go. Sir Matthew Hale said that he prospered 
during the week according to the degree of fidelity 
with which he observed the Lord's day; that his dis- 
cernment was more clear, his judgment more sound, 
and his whole personality more vigorous and valuable 
after tlie repose on the holy Sabbath. Wilberforce 
ascribed his mental activity to rest on the Sabbath 
day. And what is the story of those who have dis- 
regarded this restful period ? Unrelieved, constant, 
wearisome work dwindles the body, contracts the 
soul, renders the temper irritable, and then issues petu- 
lance, insanity, suicide of the overworked, hampered 



120 Supremacy of Law. 

in body and hampered in mind. The vascular ex- 
citement of the brain never permitted to subside^ 
anxiety and sleeplessness ensue, the digestive func- 
tions give way, nutrition is impaired, a sense of 
wretchedness is ever present ; then come palsy, apo- 
plexy, fever, death. Such was the experience of Sir 
Humphrey Davy, who in the progress of his brilliant 
professional career was smitten with nervous disease 
which compelled a sudden and long pause in his 
splendid researches that were filling all Europe with 
admiration. Such was true of Hugh Miller, who 
had toiled day and night upon his last great work. 
The Testimony of the Rocks. He took little sleep or 
exercise, became conscious that his mind was on the 
verge of ruin, and ended his days in suicide. Such 
was the case with Cavour, Italy's greatest statesman, 
who often felt, as it were, the poniard passing through 
his brain. And what is the result? Less work is 
done ; what is done is not well done ; man dies before 
his time ; the world is deprived of his experience and 
researches. 

This is the mournful history of literary men, poets, 
philosophers, orators, statesmen, scientists. This is 
the history of the man who dies from overwork, 
whose whole life has been disobedience to a principle 
so beautiful and ap]3licable to men in all ages. 



The Law of Rest. 121 

If this law IS so valuable to man relatively, as an 
individual, what must be its value as to others? 
Society is bound together by mutual and recipro- 
cal relations, by the natural relations of capital and 
labor; but the oppressions of wealth and power de- 
mand the enactment of law for the benefit of chil- 
dren, of servants, and even the dumb brutes who 
obey man's behest. Nor is the stranger exempt who 
is within our gates. 

The Sabbath is the working-man's day ; it is his 
Magna Charta ; he should stand by his rights. As if 
by anticipation of the laborer's position in society 
and the greed of capital, the Almighty stands be- 
tween the employer and the employe, saying to the 
one, " Six days shalt thou labor," and to the other, 
'• Thou shalt not compel another to work on the 
seventh day." AVhen will the working-man realize 
that Sunday is his by right ? Yet a clamor is raised 
for a Sabbath that is in no sense sacred. It is an his- 
torical truth that there is no middle ground between 
a sacred Sunday and a secular Sunday, and where the 
sacred Sunday gives way to what is called the holiday, 
the holiday in time is superseded by a secular Sunday. 
This is a universal fact. In many foreign nations the 
attempt has been made ; the first cry was for a holi- 
day but the holiday soon gave way to a day of toil. The 



122 Supremacy of Law. 

temptations of wealth are immense; money is pre- 
ferred before pleasure— all this work to feed this 
greedy monster. Wealth may be the worst of des- 
potisms — a despot cruel as death itself. 

The German government has published a marvel- 
ous work in three volumes connected with the home 
department. The most industrious and intellectual 
men of the empire have been employed through a 
period of ten years to gather facts touching this; one 
question — " What is the effect of Sunday toil upon the 
people ? " A thousand pages of the work are devoted 
to this one inquiry. Four hundred commercial and 
industrial establishments were brought to the stand 
to testify, and thousands of people who had hitherto 
worked on Sunday were called to bear testimony. 
The answer is, that the result of the holiday was to 
make a secular day, and toil became continuous and 
universal. The German Church interposed and asked 
for an hour or two, that the working-classes might 
attend the house of the Lord. According to this able 
report, the greed for more money became despotic ; 
the covetousness of capital rose to tyranny. All the 
holy hours of the day were exacted from the poor 
man, who was compelled to toil by the sweat of his 
brow — simply to make contributions to those who had 
the capital. So much for Europe. In this country 



The Law of Rest. 123 

1 hear the clamor for Sunday amusements, Sunday 
papers, Sunday mails, Sunday railroads. I protest in 
behalf of humanity that the tendency of a holiday is 
to secularization. The protest is in behalf of those 
who must be compelled to toil seven days in the week 
to minister to the gratification of a class of persons 
who seek such gratification on the Lord's day. There 
ought to be a revolution in public sentiment — a revo- 
lution in the Church and out of the Church. 

The cry for rest comes from hundreds of thousands 
employed on Sunday railroads, Sunday mails, Sunday 
newspapers. With an avariciousness that knows no 
cessation the people demand a Sunday paper, the de- 
livery of their letters on Monday ; but these come 
through hands that have toiled all day on the Sabbath, 
and all Sabbath night, to meet what is called the de- 
mands of advanced civilization. Let civilization 
perish, but let God's beneficent government be firm, 
and let his Sabbath law for humanity be vindicated 
forever. Men plead the law of necessity ; but ne- 
cessity knows no law when the high-born interests of 
humanity are at stake. The ancient law is, '' Remem- 
ber the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt 
thou labor, and do all thy work : but the seventh day 
is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt 
not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, 



124 SUPKEMACY OF LaW. 

thy manservant nor thy maidservant, nor thy cat- 
tle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates : For in 
six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and 
all that in them is, and rested the seventh day : where- 
fore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed 
it. (Exod. XX, 8-11.) 

We should distinguish between what is universal, 
what is national, and what is traditional in this old Mo- 
saic law. The division of time into weeks is univer- 
sal, and is not Jewish. In his controversy with Apion 
Josephus says: — " There is no city, Greek or barba- 
rian, nor any nation where the Sabbath is not known ;" 
and the learned Philo calls the Sabbath " the festival 
of the nativity of the world." In this broader and 
grander sense this beneficent law is for all men and 
all ages. It derived its national limitation from cer- 
tain prohibitions to distinguish the Jews from sur- 
rounding nations, and these inhibitions related to the 
kindling of fire, gathering of wood, and the length of 
a journey on that day. In process of time tliis noble 
institution for the benefit of man was overburdened 
with traditions, and the old superstitious rabbins 
added not less than forty prohibitions which were as 
foolish as they were exacting ; such as the peeling or 
roasting of an apple, the killing of a fly or a flea, 
playing on an instrument loud enough to waken a 



The Law of Rest. 125 

sleeping child, not to travel more than a mile, not to 
lift a beast out of a ditch, not to light or put out a 
lamp, not to carry heavy burdens, not to defend one's 
self, not to touch money on that day — which is the 
onl}^ sensible prohibition of the forty. But God is not 
responsible for these absurdities ; they are without 
divine sanction. Christ swept them all away when he 
said "the Sabbath was made for man." 

Seven times was Christ charged with Sabbath-break- 
ing ; seven times he was threatened with death for the 
supposed offenses, seven times he defended himself 
against the Church. On these seven occasions he did 
acts of mercy and deeds of necessity. The law he 
violated, which aroused such public indignation and 
inspired such murderous assaults, was it divine or 
liuman ? The law of Mount Sinai does not forbid acts 
of kindness ; it is the embodiment of mercy. Laws 
are silent when necessity compels ; necessary actions 
are not forbidden therein. The law he violated was 
a human invention, a superstitious device, a mon- 
strous caricature. Christ was the iconoclast. He de- 
stroyed the senseless traditions of the elders. He was 
no less the restorer of the true Sabbath, expanding 
the law in accordance with the original intent thereof, 
and exalting its spirit above any oral interpretation. 

It was he who said the " Sabbath was made for 



126 Supremacy of Law. 

man." How simple and beautiful the import of the 
ancient law, " Kemember " — recall, keep in mind, 
give it a prominent place in your thought, anticipate 
its coming with delight, remember it not as something 
of the past, but as a sweet day of mental and bodily 
rest to come at the end of six days of toil, so that 
when Saturday night comes man takes a farewell to 
this carking world and for twenty-four hours enjoys 
his sweet franchise ! (Mark i, 21-35 ; Luke xiii, 
10-17 ; xiv, 1-6 ; John v, 2-16 ; and vii, 16.) Christ 
proclaimed himself Lord of the Sabbath. On that 
day he taught the people some of his greatest dis- 
courses ; he wrought his grandest miracles ; he made 
journej^s ; he did acts of human kindness ; he justified 
deeds of necessity ; he smiled upon his disciples who 
plucked the corn in the fields ; he quoted David's 
hunger as a justification for the violation of the ca- 
nonical or ceremonial law, by eating the show-bread of 
the tabernacle to prevent starvation ; he reminded his 
hearers that the show-bread was made on the Sabbath 
(Lev. xxiv, 8) ; that the priests' duties required them 
to hew the wood, light the fires, bake the bread, kill 
and offer the sacrifice ; and that the victims offered 
on that day were twice as many as on a week-day. He 
also accepted an invitation to dine on the Sabbath in 
the town of Nain. His host was a chief of the 



The Law of Rest. 127 

Pharisees, perliaps a member of the Sanhedrin — some 
Nicodemus or Gamaliel. The Jewish Sabbath din- 
ner was a more sumptuous meal than on any other 
day. It was a threefold feast (Neh. viii, 10-12) ; but 
the preparations for the feast were made on the 
previous day. St. Luke gives the scene at the table 
and the table-talk (Luke xiv). And how did he 
spend the Christian Sabbath — the holy Easter to com- 
memorate his resurrection ? On the first Easter Sab- 
bath he appeared five times to his friends- — to Mary 
of Magdala, to other women, to St. Peter, to the dis- 
ciples en route for Emmaus, and to his ten disciples ; 
eight days thereafter he appeared to the eleven, when 
Thomas was there. This is the way in which he ob- 
served the Jewish and the Christian Sabbath — by 
mercy, kindness, necessity, useful journeys, festivities 
with friends, teaching the people, comforting his fol- 
lowers, and reminding all of the rest in heaven. 

And how far can the State go in the recognition of 
this day of rest ? The State is bound to intervene ; the 
principle of reciprocity demands attention ; rest for all 
men demands that all men shall rest ; if one banker rest 
all bankers must rest, all merchants must suspend busi- 
ness, all professions must cease to labor. Uniformity 
and conformity must go hand in hand. Our govern- 
ment is not irreligious^ but it is non-religious. It is a 



128 • Supremacy of Law. 

government based on the authority of nature. The 
State is bound to legislate accordingly. The State's 
highest authority is " This is nature." The religious 
element is not therein involved. This is something 
that is older than revelation. We must distinguish 
between a civil Sabbath and a sacred Sabbath. The 
sacred Sabbath belongs to the individual. It is a 
matter of his personal conscience how he shall deport 
timself on his day of rest, but the civil Sunday be- 
longs to the authority and majesty of the government. 
Sunday laws of rest are in every State in the nation, 
except California. There the law once prevailed, but 
it was abrogated to the disadvantage of the Golden 
State, to the corruption of public morals, to the dis- 
Bolution of family ties, and to the high behests of 
liberty. 

There is a clamor in this country for the substitution 
of a continental Sunday for our national Sabbath, with 
its quietude, restfulness, and religious tendency ; it 
<»omes largely from those who were born on the other 
■side of the deep, aliens to our Commonwealth, who 
are here for selfish purposes — to better their temporal 
condition ; who have no sympathy with our institu- 
tions; who have no love for those great liberties 
which underlie our majestic government. I do not 
include all. At the sound of the tocsin of alarm. 



The Law of Rest. 129 

intelligent foreigners would join hands with native- 
born citizens, to stand by the Sabbath of onr fore- 
fathers ; but it is those less educated, or those reared 
in the atmosphere of infidelity, or of socialism, or of 
anarchy, who demand the substitution of a continental 
Sunday. Where that Sunday prevails what are the 
facts ? The toilers toil, places of public amusement 
are open, the churches are little frequented, the family 
is demoralized, society is corrupted. 

The American Sabbath is coeval with the colonies 
of this great country ; and so long as men shall cher- 
ish the name of Washington, so long will they re- 
member his military orders for the observation of the 
Sabbath. In 1776, Washington issued the following 
order: " That the troops may have an opportunity of 
attending public worship, as well as to take some rest 
after the fatigue they have gone through, the gen- 
eral in future excuses them from fatigue duty on Sun- 
days, except at the ship-yards, or on special occasions, 
till further orders. . . . We can have little hope 
of the blessing of Heaven on our arms if we insult it 
by our impiety and folly." And standing side by 
side with that illustrious man is Abraham Lincoln, 
who, in 1862, quoted from Washington and issued 
this order : " The president, commander-in-chief of 
the army and navy, desires and enjoins the orderly 



130 SUPKEMACY OF LaW. 

observance of the Sabbath by the officers and men in 
the military and naval services. The importance for 
man and beast of the prescribed weekly rest, the 
sacred right of Christian soldiers and sailors of becom- 
ing deference to the best sentiment of a Christian 
people, and a due regard for the divine will demand 
that Sunday labor in the army and navy be reduced to 
the measure of strict necessity. The discipline and 
character of the national forces should not suflEer, nor 
the cause they defend be imperiled by the profanation 
of the day or the name of the Most High. ' At this 
time of public distress,' adopting the words of Wash- 
in 1776, ^men may find enough to do in the service 
of God and their country without abandoning them- 
selves to vice and immorality.' " 

And then it is one of the sublime facts ever and 
anon appearing in our political history. At the Con- 
vention at Chicago that nominated Garfield, when 
Saturday night came, and some politicians were clam- 
orous to continue the ballot through the rest of the 
next day, " No," said Judge Hoar, who presided ; 
"never! This is a Sabbath-keeping nation, and I 
cannot preside over this convention one minute after 
twelve o'clock." "We need just such statesmen in 
Congress, for there are men there that spend the first 
one or two months of the session in doing nothing but 



The Law of Rest. 131 

drawing tlieir pay, and then, at the close of the ses- 
sion, they crowd their work into God's holy day — 
"better the day, better the deed — " in justification of 
the violation of God's holy law. Away with such 
men ! Give us a class of statesmen that will stand by 
Washington and Lincoln and Webster and those 
other great men who stand by the Almighty and his 
Sabbath law. The Huguenots of the Carolinas, the 
Quakers of Pennsylvania, the Dutch of iVFew Jersey, 
the Roman Catholics of Maryland, and the Puritans of 
New England, when colonists, came to this country 
with a profound regard for the holy Sabbath. It is 
in this sense an American institution, because it is 
recognized by the Legislature of every State but one, 
because it is recognized by the general government, be- 
cause we have demonstrated by a century of existence 
the value of a holy Sabbath to the physical and moral 
welfare of man. 

Rising above all these considerations is the loftier 
one that every man has a moral nature to be culti- 
vated, and for which educational forces are needful. 
Doomed to toil, perplexed with anxieties, the Christian 
looks forward to the Lord's day of rest when he can 
cease from the labors of the week, enter the temple of 
God to have his mind instructed and his heart ten- 
derly moved to virtue and to duty. To him this is 



132 Supremacy of Law. 

the only memorial the Creator has left of creation. 
As God accomplished that work in six days and rested 
on the seventh, so he says to all his human children : 
" Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy." And 
as the companion memorial of the fact the resurrec- 
tion of Christ is celebrated as the soft pure light of 
each Christian Sabbath dawns upon the earth. Here 
nature and revelation meet, the one demanding rest, 
the other calling man to devotion. 

It is a beautiful thought by Hugh Miller that, while 
six periods of time were occupied in the creation of 
the world, God is employing the seventh period in 
the moral elevation of man. This elevation cannot 
be a work of creation, but of progression, and is to 
advance till Creator and creature meet in heaven. 



Law of Home. 133 



VI. 

LA^W OF HOME. 

HOME is a place of abode. It may be adorned 
with all the elegance that heart can wish, art 
create, and wealth procure ; where pictures by the old 
masters ornament the walls; where the niches are 
filled with mute but attractive statuary; where by 
day the light streams through curtains of richest lace 
and by night falls softly from golden chandeliers; 
where fountains send uj) their sparkling waters and 
murmur their perennial song ; where plants from 
every clime fill the conservatory with their beauty 
and fragrance ; where birds from the tropics de- 
light the eye with their gorgeous plumage and 
enchant the ear with their ravishing music ; where 
the fruits of every zone and the delicacies of each 
revolving season tempt the appetite and gratify the 
taste. 

Home may be a place where happiness waits on hon- 
est industry ; where comfort comes from competency 
rather than from luxury ; where the Bible spreads 
its banquet of wisdom and love, and prayer bears on 



134 Supremacy of Law. 

liigli the desires of the heart, and praise wafts to 
heaven the gratitude of the sonl ; where the father is 
the priest, the mother the priestess, and the children 
the choir of sweetest song. 

Home may be a place where want and wretched- 
ness hold ghastly revels ; where bare floors, broken 
furniture, hard beds, tattered garments, and scanty fare 
are the emblems of distress ; where the face never 
smiles but in idiotic laughter or drunken carousal ; 
where love is consumed by perpetual hate ; where 
parents are the counterparts of depravity, and their 
children, born in sin, cradled in crime, are brought up 
for hell. 

Forever associated with home are three fundamental 
ideas — family, marriage, parentage. The family is the 
oldest institution of our social life. It comes to us 
venerable with age. In all the ages, in all the nations, 
under all civilizations, it has been the bond of wedded 
union. The Creator divides our race, not by indi- 
viduals, but by families, and thereby gives sanction to 
an institution designed for all time and to be the per- 
manent source of domestic happiness and national 
wealth. In the family are the elements of an empire. 
As the fountain is more than the stream and the 
harvest more than the seed-corn, so the family is 
more than the State, more than the Church ; when 



Law of Home. 135 

states are sundered and the cliurclies are scattered 
the family remains. 

Marriage is as old as time. Its design, obligations, 
rights, duties, muniments, and benedictions indicate 
its divine origin. It is not an accident that comes 
without cause or premeditation; it is not a human 
device for sensual gratification ; it is not an expediency 
to meet an emergency ; but it is an institution that lies 
at the foundation of society. It is more than a civil 
contract to be made and dissolved at pleasure ; it is 
independent of the State in its origin and independent 
of the State in its destruction ; it stands out sublime in 
its isolation and grand in its perpetuity ; it is at once 
an act and a state ; it is not so much a law as it is a 
relation, for the relation takes precedence of law. 
Law may be posterior to the antecedent relation, and 
we must therefore look upon this family relation as a 
state, containing the elements of perpetuity and in- 
dependent of the transitoriness of human legislation. 
It is an institution whose originator is God. It is 
primal in its history and authoritative in its obliga- 
tions. It comes to us with the sanction of a special 
act of the Creator, the Sovereign of the universe. 
The record of the first marriage is given with all the 
majesty and integrity of accredited history. 

In its lofty design it includes companionship, 



136 Supremacy of Law. 

posterity, and purity. It is a relation of wedded love ; 
it is a union of two loving hearts ; its supreme end i& 
affection, from which it derives its nourishment, but it 
is blasted, withers and dies without this, its native 
element. What was said of man so should be said of 
woman, *' solitude is not good.'' The social nature 
must have its outlet, and the outlet is in the union of 
two human spirits, wedded by divine authority and 
bound together with the tenderest ties of a deathles& 
love. There is no such bliss on earth as is found in 
two loving hearts, no such companionship as in the 
association of husband and wife, no such sweet fellow* 
ship as in their intercommunion. It is the sanctity of 
sanctities, the holy of holies of human life. 

Out of this companionship flows posterity. No 
doubt the Creator had a choice in perpetuating the 
human race, whether by creation or generation. 
Angels are created ; they stand forth as individuals^ 
with no other bond of union than a common creation. 
The race was started on the same plan. Adam and 
Eve had no father, no mother, and the organic law, 
" honor thy father and thy mother " was not applica- 
ble to them. They were originals — creations. The 
Infinite Father might have pursued the same course 
and peopled our earth by creation rather than by 
generation ; but he thought it wiser and better for 



Law of Home. 137 

the race to give this bond of union to husband and 
wife and to secure to childhood the love and attention 
that should flow from parentage. 

And out of this holy companionship comes the 
purity of wedded life. Purity admits of gratification 
within the limitations of law ; for all human passions 
are designed by the Creator for a beneficent purpose, 
and when gratified within the limits of law they are 
as pure as the prayer of a saint or the song of an 
angel. It is only when men carry that which is virtu- 
ous in itself to excess, when they seek gratification 
outside of the limits of law, that they become sinners 
against God and criminals against society. This purity 
of wedded life is protected by the seventh command- 
ment. 

The obligations of marriage are threefold : volun- 
tary, monogamous, indissoluble. Marriage should be 
an independent, deliberate, love-choosing; a solemn, 
independent acceptance. There should be no coercion, 
either by parental authority, or the creation of cir- 
cumstances, or by false motives, or the gratification of 
pride and vanity. There should be the simple fact of 
mutual and reciprocal love between the parties ; and 
where this exists, all else being equal, that is the true 
condition and the right of matrimony and has the 
blessing of Heaven. How sad the mistake made by 



138 Supremacy of Law. 

parents, when from lower motives, even base motives, 
this holy estate is entered to gratify ambitions of hfe. 
Insane indeed must be that mother who would lead to 
the bridal altar a pure, beautiful, unsuspecting daugh- 
ter, and wed her to a rotten carcass, because such a per- 
son has wealth or social position or bears the empty 
title of count or duke. There should be the exercise 
of volition, foursquare volition, an intelligent choice 
sustained by common sense — not called common be- 
cause it is frequent, but because it appreciates due 
relations of life and of means to an end. 

Marriage is monogamous ; it is unity in duality ; it 
can never be a trinity. It is a union of two to the 
exclusion of a third. The third can never be ad- 
mitted. If admitted, then instead of heaven there is 
hell on earth, for the one that is rejected suffers from 
consuming hate and wastes away to the sadness of the 
grave. How intense the light nature throws upon 
this great fact. Nature is our great teacher. ITature 
is older than revelation. There are two Bibles in the 
world: the universe and the Scriptures — the latter a 
commentary upon the former ; and he is a wise logi- 
cian who builds all his religious faith upon natural re- 
ligion, adduced from the constitution of nature. And 
what is this light of nature ? Look at the equality in 
the proportion of the sexes, the males and females. It 



Law of Home. 139 

is as one liundred males to ninety-four females. Take 
the population of our own country, running through a 
period of forty years : 

In 1850, the whole population was 23,191,876 

Males 1 1,837,600 

Females 11,354,216 

Excess of males 483,384 

In 1860, the whole population was 31,443,321 

Males 16,085,204 

Females 15,358,117 

Excess of males 727,087 

No physiologist will presume to declare that he has 
discovered a law to regulate this numerical equality of 
the sexes. The theologians claim that it is one of the 
reserved rights of the Creator ; and with all the ad- 
vances of science, medicine, physiology, this great fact 
stands out in bold relief as the interposition of Prov- 
idence. 

In 1870, the whole population was 88,558,371 

Males 19,493,565 

Females 19,064,806 

Excess of males 428,759 

The same thing is true in regard to the colored 
population. 

In 1870, the colored population was 4,295,960 

Males 2,115,380 

Females 2,180,580 

Excess of females 65,200 



140 Supremacy of Law. 

It is a great fact running through the races. It is 
true of the poor Indian. 

Ill 1870, the Indian population was 96,366 

Males, matured 26,583 

Females, matured 30,464 

Excess of females 3,881 

Male children 19,740 

Female children ] 9,519 

Excess of males 161 

The same is true of the census of 1880. 

The whole population in that year was 50,155,783 

Males 25,518,820 

Females 24,636,963 

Excess of males 881,857 

Take five great European nations, France, Austria, 
Spain, Italy, and Prussia, which are military nations. 
The whole population was 138,000,000, and there was 
only an excess of 1,074,000 females; but add the 
standing armies of those nations in 1860 of 1,135,575, 
and it gives an excess of 61,575 males. 

It is a curious fact that, while in 1860 there was in 
this country an excess of 727,087 males, there was in 
Great Britain an excess of about 700,000 females, so 
that in the two great branches of the Anglo-Saxon 
race there was an equality of the sexes as to num- 
bers. 

And these numerical facts confirm the tenor of the 
Holy Scriptures. Sometimes it is asserted that all the 



Law of Home. 141 

famous characters of the Old Testament were polyg- 
amists ; but this is an assertion made by those who are 
too ignorant to understand or too indolent to read. 
Look at the roll of honor of those who stood fast by 
the venerable and beneficent monogamous institution. 
There is but one case of polygamy on record from 
Adam to Noah, during sixteen hundred years, and 
that case issued in murder. Adam and all the ante- 
diluvian patriarchs, Abraham and Isaac, Joseph and 
Moses, Aaron and Joshua, all the prophets and all the 
apostles were advocates and supporters of duality in 
marriage ; and, rising above all these in glory and au- 
thority, is the Saviour, who restored marriage to its 
primal purity of condition. He denounced simultane- 
ous and successive polygamy, which was practiced in 
his day ; and with the authority of Mount Sinai on his 
brow he called the attention of the people to the 
primal institution, and said, '^ From the beginning it 
was not so," when God created one man and one 
woman. And true to history, echoing, as it were, 
Moses on Sinai and Christ on the mount, St. Paul 
said, *' Let every man have his own wife, and let every 
woman her own husband." With such an origin and 
with such sanctions, it is no wonder that this relation 
is indissoluble except for one cause, and that cause 
foreordained by the great Lawgiver of the universe. 



142 Supremacy of Law. 

Stability is necessary to society, necessary for the 
Clmrcli, necessary for the government. If the fam- 
ily ceases to be stable then all else is ''shifting sand." 
Society must have a sheet-anchor ; that sheet-anchor 
is tlie indissoluble family. Other causes may justify 
separation. An imbruted, intoxicated, indolent, in- 
solent, incompetent husband, refusing to provide for 
his family, ceasing to be the house-band, may justify 
separation, both in the estimation of the civil and the 
divine law. But the right of remarriage does not 
necessarily flow out of the right of separation. Mar- 
riage may prove unhappy from many causes — from 
disposition, change of circumstances, disappointment ; 
but such things enter into human lot and condition. 
Where the one justifiable cause exists, reformation in 
many cases is better than separation. Evils multiply 
where the marriage bands are sundered ; divine grace 
may mollify what human nature cannot endure. A re- 
pentant husband and a patient wife may perpetuate a 
home otherwise to be broken and forever blasted. Of 
the two parties most concerned, woman should be the 
last to advocate the monstrous theory that marriage is 
a failure and that divorce is the only remedy for the 
evils thereof. Woman would be the greater loser. 
If she is permitted to dissolve the marriage-tie on the 
ground of taste and incompatibility, a larger percentage 



Law of Home. 143 

of men would demand the dissolution than women. 
Man's love is more capricious, his temptations are 
more numerous and powerful, he has less to lose and 
less to suffer. A homeless woman is more to be pitied 
than a homeless man. The Cliurch anticipated the 
mutations of time and the transitions of life on this 
holiest and happiest of relations ; hence her beau- 
tiful ritual, wherein she requires all who approach her 
bridal altars to take each other "for better, for 
worse." 

I am opposed to divorce except in extreme and 
extraordinary cases. Were marriage instituted for 
personal gratification or for domestic felicity its per- 
manence as a social institution would not be of so 
great importance to society at large. Doubtless com- 
panionship is an underlying reason in the wedded life 
of two individuals, and flowing therefrom are mutual 
and reciprocal duties and enjoyments. When com- 
panionship is no longer a consideration for the perpe- 
tuity of this dual relation, whether from incompati- 
bility of temperament or that familiarity tliat breeds 
contempt, or the superior attractions of another, the 
marriage tie might be sundered and the individuals 
return to the great unmarried mass of humanity. 
But the primal reason for this venerable institution, 
that comes down to us from the most distant past. 



144 Supremacy of Law. 

recognized by all civilizations and sanctified by all 
religions, is the welfare of childhood, that needs a 
mother's love and a father's protection. Of all ani- 
mals the human infant is the most helpless known to 
mankind. It has neither instinct nor reason to pro- 
tect its infantile days. Nature has ordained for it 
the ceaseless vigils of maternal love and the unceasing 
care of the paternal heart. Upon the proper develop- 
ment of its body, the education of its intellect, the 
unfolding of its moral nature, the future depends and 
the welfare of society is involved. In all the ages and 
in all types of society there has been sympathy for 
defenseless orphanage. There is no more powerful 
appeal to the sympathies of humanity than the de- 
fenselessness of the parentless child. "What stronger 
argument can be offered against the separation of 
parents by divorce than the well-being of the off- 
spring. Born into the world without their consent, 
children have a prescriptive right to the protection 
which flows out of the institution of marriage. To 
dissolve the wedding bands, no matter which parent 
becomes the legal guardian of the child, is to rob the 
child of that which by nature and of right is an in- 
heritance. 

There should be but one justifiable cause for the 
permanent separation of husband and wife with the 



Law of Home. 145 

right of remarriage, and that under the most extraor- 
dinary provocations. Domestic infelicity is an immeas- 
urable crime ; it stings the heart as no other offense. 
It is a fire in the bones ; it is poison in the blood ; yet 
even this offense should be considered in the light of 
attendant circumstances before the marriage compact 
is dissolved by civil authority. Were there no such 
thing in the world as Christianity, and had we never 
heard of the one justifiable cause for separation and 
remarriage, as uttered by the Saviour, human nature 
would be the same, and an offense against the marital 
relation would be as criminal and destructive as 
now estimated. Nature is older than Christianity, 
and her voice is as authoritative as was the voice that 
uttered the Sermon on the Mount. The equal pro- 
portion of males and females is a colossal condemna- 
tion of the frequency of modern divorce. There is a 
woman for every man and a man for every woman. 
The system of modern divorce is legalized robbery of 
the inalienable rights of men and women. It is pro- 
gressive polygamy ; a marriage to-day, a divorce to- 
morrow, a marriage the day after. It is more abrupt 
and indecent than simultaneous polygamy, where the 
man is bound to provide for his plural wives. There 
should be such a revolution in our marriage laws as 

to make divorce diflScult and marriage permanent. 
10 



146 Supremacy of Law. 

As well might we have civil sanction for the dissolu- 
tion of parent and child, for the disinheritance of 
children because of temper, for idleness, or negligence 
of duty. Marriage is something more than a lottery, 
something more than a chance. It is a choice for 
better or for worse. Looking, therefore, at the sanc- 
tity of home, at the permanency of society, at the 
well-being of the world, I would justify separation, 
without the right of remarriage, only in extreme 
cases, and absolute divorce, with the right of second 
marriage, only where the offense is justified by the 
most extreme provocation. 

Out of marriage flows parentage, with its threefold 
rights — authority, protection, reciprocity. Father 
and mother are terms of sweetest endearment. These 
are the terms in the organic law, rather than husband 
and wife, and are significant of parentage, of marriage, 
of family, and of home. Father signifies kindness, 
mother implies fountain ; husband has an inferior 
sense and means house-band — that which binds the 
home together — and from this came our verb to hus- 
band our resources, our strength, our efforts. Wife 
is strangely the equivalent of mother, and signifies 
source or fountain. These generic terms are selected 
by the infinite Lawgiver, who officiated at the first 
marriage amid the bowers of Eden^ and who on Mount 



Law of Home. 147 

Sinai commanded, " Honor thy father and tliy mother: 
that tliy days may be long upon the land which the 
Lord thy God giveth thee/' 

To the husband and father belongs the right of 
authority ; he is the head of the family, tlie priest of 
the household, the vicegerent of the Almighty. There 
must be a depository of authority, and somebody must 
be responsible in law, for law segregates the individual 
from the mass when seeking the individual criminal. 
Law cannot look to families in their composite status, 
and therefore the Creator has made the husband and 
the father the depository of authority. But in this 
honorable and responsible designation the question of 
superiority and inferiority does not inhere in the 
ancient law, for the two are associated in equal honor 
— " Honor thy father and thy mother." There cannot 
be a simpler, plainer declaration of equality in the 
household than this. The honor is to be to the one 
and to the other. Authority does not suppose superi- 
ority ; our rulers are not our superiors because they 
administer government. In many things they may 
be our inferiors, but it has pleased us to designate 
them to be our rulers. 

The New Testament law is, " Wives, submit your- 
selves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord : . . . 
Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved 



148 Supremacy of Law. 

the Clmrch, and gave himself for it." Eph. v, 22, 25. 
But this submission is not a cringing servitude, a serv- 
ile obedience to a lordly husband, but a dignified 
recognition of his headship in the government of the 
household. It is a gentle acquiescence in his decisions, 
a calm respect to him who bears the image of God 
and wliose representative he is ; but, lest he should 
prove a tyrant, the wife has certain reserved rights 
guaranteed by the law. She is to submit as " unto 
the Lord " — that is, as unto God's appointed repre- 
sentative. The husband holds the relation to his own 
family that God holds to the universal family of man. 
If the husband is the representative of the Lord, then 
the husband should be like the Lord, and if the hus- 
band is like the Lord, what wife would refuse submis- 
sion to such a man ? Paul runs the comparison between 
Christ and his Church, and the husband and his wife. 
As Christ is the head of his Church, the husband is 
the head of his family. There is a limit to man's 
authority, by his likeness to Christ in purity, goodness, 
fidelity ; but when the husband is unlike Christ, in his 
commands and in the exercise of his authority, then 
the woman's obligations of submission cease; he can- 
not compel a wife to do wrong. 

He may be profligate, but he cannot compel her to 
be profligate ; he may be an infidel, but he cannot 



Law of Home. 149 

compel her to deny her Lord. He is bound to respect 
her rights of conscience to believe and worship as she 
thinks proper. He cannot compel her to disregard 
her filial duties nor forfeit her own happiness. These 
reserved rights of woman are not surrendered by the 
marriage contract. The husband's authority relates to 
the support and happiness of the household. Many a 
Avife is the physical, intellectual, and moral superior of 
the man she wedded, but this does not contravene the 
general law ; it is his misfortune. Submission is an 
easier duty to perform than to love. The command 
is, "Husbands, love your wives," which implies two 
things — to take supreme delight in the person loved, 
and to render that person happy. The slave may 
submit to the master's dictation, the subject to the 
will of the ruler, the child to the command of the 
parent, the wife to the husband, without a particle of 
love ; but the husband is to love his wife nolens volens. 
There is no escape from it ; he must delight in her to 
the exclusion of the third party ; he must render her 
happy to the extent of his ability ; not to do so is re- 
bellion against God. He is to love her " as his own 
body," " for no man ever yet hated his own flesh." 
He is to love her as " Christ also loved his Church, 
and gave himself for it." What woman would not 
love such a husband ? 



150 Supremacy of Law. 

Out of this authority and protection comes reci- 
procity. It is the law of equivalents — a life for a life, 
a body for a body, a soul for a soul, a whole heart for 
a whole lieart, undivided, without a rival, never per- 
mitting an intruder. And there should also be the 
equivalent of character. If a man demands a bride 
pure, beautiful and unsuspecting, the bride has a 
right to demand a pure bridegroom. What a crime 
against society, what an insult to Him who has insti- 
tuted marriage, what a reflection upon the purity and 
wealth of woman's love, tbat a man who has spent his 
life in riotous living, wasted his energies in the ways 
of vice, who has lived a despicable, vicious life, should 
demand as his bride a spotless woman ! By sucli a 
demand the law of equivalents is violated, and that 
man has no more right to such a woman than he has 
to an angel. 

Wherever there are rights there are also duties ; the 
two complement each other. In the holy estate of 
matrimony the mystic number ''three" spans the 
duties of wedded life — amiability, contentment, devo- 
tion. Home is the place for the display of the noblest 
traits of character. It is there, as nowhere else, that 
the real character appears to light. This world is a 
masquerade ; few appear abroad as they do at home. 
Wlien in society the best are conscious of restraint. 



Law of Home. 151 

They measure their words, guard their actions, watch 
their spirit. The proud assume an air of humility, 
the ambitious seem contented, the passionate appear 
cahn, the petulant patient, the selfish liberal, the 
austere gentle and yielding. The motive to disguise 
is the good opinion of others ; but at home the dis- 
guise is thrown aside, the motive lias ceased to oper- 
ate, and man and woman appear as they are. The 
polished man in society is the uncouth husband and 
the rough father at home ; the sweet and elegant lady 
in company is the brawling wife and the scolding 
mother ; the amiable brother and the gentle sister are 
the disagreeable and the unkind. Some appear to 
best advantage at their own firesides. Careless about 
the empty plaudits of others, they are happiest when 
surrounded with the loved ones at home. There they 
shine as stars of the first magnitude, while in promis- 
cuous assemblies their steadier light is lost amid the 
dazzle of fashion or obscured by the mists of unnatu- 
ral excitement. Home is the best place for man to 
judge of himself ; it is a judgment-seat most like the 
impartial throne of the Eternal. There man sees 
himself as God sees him. Some choose home to spit 
their spleen and uncork the bottle of their discontent. 
They should do this in the world, where no one thinks 
enough of them to resent. They should storm away 



152 Supremacy of Law. 

outside, and reserve their calm for the bosom of their 
household ; for home is the scene of our deepest sor- 
rows and of our highest joys. It is the scene of wed- 
ded love, of parentage, of affection, of filial reverence, 
and there falls heaviest the blow of sorrow, whether 
of scandal or ruined fortune or death itself. Home 
should be the most attractive place on earth. What 
a sham life, where home is nightly abandoned for 
theaters, operas, and convivial parties ! But the wife, 
mother, and si'ster are the chief attractions of home. 
Books, music, flowers, delightful conversation are the 
ministers of their pleasure. Here is woman's true 
sphere of power and glory ; the guardian of infancy, 
the instructor of childhood, the companion of youth, 
the partner of manhood, the comfort of old age ; here 
woman is to diminish sorrow by her sympathy, 
heighten joy by her gayety, soothe by her tenderness, 
dignify by her intelligence, elevate by her devotions. 
A true man is proud of such a home, and with Gold- 
smith sings : 

" In all my wanderings round this world of care, 
In all my griefs — and God has given my share — 
I still had hopes my latest hours to crown, 
Amid the humble bowers to lay me down ; 
To husband out life's taper at the close, 
And keep the fiame from wasting by repose ; 
I still had hopes, for pride attends us still, 
Amid the swains to show my book-learned skill, 



Law of Home. 155 

Around my fire an evening group to draw 
And tell of all I felt and all I saw, 
And, as a hare whom hound and horns pursue, 
Pants to the place from whence at first it flew, 
I still had hopes, my long vexations past, 
Here to return, and die at home, at last." 

Above all, home is the school of cliildhood. All 
that is elementary and rudimentary we learn at home. 
It is there we learn to feel, think, and speak; home 
is the model-room of life. Home is the throne of 
Christ. 

" The family is the seminary of the social affections 
and the cradle of sensibility, where the first elements 
are acquired of that tenderness and humanity which 
cement mankind together, and were they . entirelj 
extinguished the whole fabric of social institutions 
would be dissolved." — Robert Hall. 

How simple and beautiful are the duties of chil- 
dren, as taught in this ancient law, ^' Honor thy father 
and thy mother." " Cliildren, obey your parents in the 
Lord ; " comply with their wishes, seek their happi- 
ness, support them in old age, give them the best of 
every thing, return their kindness with compound 
interest. Such love and obedience may be hard to 
render when parents are unworthy, unsympathetic, 
overbearing, who do not appreciate the feelings of 



154 Supremacy of Law. 

the young. Yet duty calls ; the struggle may be severe, 
but the remembrance of the victory will be sweet. 
Hold them in grateful remembrance, honor them 
when dead, cover their graves with flowers, keep 
green a spot in the kindly garden of the heart for 
father and mother. Home should be intensely relig- 
ious ; there the fires of devotion should burn brightly 
upon the altars of wedded life. There the Bible 
should spread its banquet of wisdom and love, there 
the morning song should bear on high the gratitude 
of the heart, and the vesper hymn should waft to the 
skies the joys of the soul. Such a home will be the 
nursery of the Church, out of which will come those 
strong in virtue and mighty to battle for the right. 
Out of such a home will spring the new life of the 
republic, whose institutions will be preserved for 
suceeding generations, whose benedictions shall be 
transmitted from generation to generation, and whose 
glory shall blend with the glory of the Lord. 



Rights of Life. 155 



YII. 

BIGHTS OF lilFE. 

THERE is a nobility in life. It is a grand thing 
to live. Whether in the ephemera of an hour 
or the eagle of a century, the flower of a day or the 
yew-tree of a thousand years, the infant of a week or 
the man of threescore and ten, life is a glorious fact. 
Life is every- where ; it is the only thing of which 
God seems prodigal. There is life in the earth and 
on the earth, in the sea and on tlie sea, and through- 
out the vast expanse of the atmosphere. There is 
life in the fungi, in the lichen, in the blood-rain, in 
the fire that sparkles on the summer sea, in the motes 
that dance in tlie sunbeam, and in the dew-drop — 
Aurora's diamond. Give the microscopist more light 
and he will reveal the existence of more life. It is 
not possible to conceive of life devoid of grandeur. 
Whatever may be the misery incident to existence, to 
live is preferable to annihilation. Among the mys- 
teries of life is what scholars call " the lease of life.'' 
No general law has yet been discovered, either in the 
animal or vegetable kingdom, fixing this limitation. 



156 Supremacy of Law. 

The lease of life varies in animals and in plants. In 
eome it is a song, a thrill of love ; in others it sweeps 
through the centuries. The average life of a rabbit 
is eight years, that of a dog twenty-four years, that of 
the sagacious and docile elepliant one hundred and 
fifty years ; the raven that croaks his coming lives 
through the century, and tlie whale a century and a 
half. The grains of wheat taken from the hands of 
a mummy germinate after three thousand years of 
captivity. The somber cypress flourishes through 
eight centuries, the cedars through two thousand 
years, the yew-tree through three millenniums. There 
is at Calaveras, in California, one of the Sequoia Gi- 
gantea — or big trees, as they are sometimes called — 
that is four hundred and fifty feet high and one liun- 
dred feet in circumference. That tree sprouted when 
Solomon was in his glory ; it was in its prime when 
Eome was mistress of the world ; it stood in its 
majesty when Christ was a babe in Bethlehem. 

"What life is, is one of the deepest of all mysteries. 
The answer has baffled the chemist, the biologist, and 
physiologist, who have toiled in vain on this splendid 
theme. But the heart of nature's mystery has defied 
all research. Bichat may say, '' Life is the sum of 
the functions by which death is resisted ; " Herbert 
Spencer may say, ''Life is the continuous adjustment 



Rights of Life. 157 

of internal relations to external relations ; " Aristotle 
may say, " Life is the form of organism ; " but still we 
ask. What is life f Bichat merely tells ns that life is 
not death ; Spencer simply gives ns the signs of life ; 
Aristotle gives us a fact, and not a definition. In a 
general sense we may say that life attests its presence 
by certain signs. As we now understand life is five- 
fold — vegetable, animal, immaterial, spiritual, and 
eternal. Life in the vegetable kingdom is indicated 
by secretion, absorption, and reproduction. When 
applied to animals its indications are sensation, mo- 
tion, procreation. Ascending the scale to the higher 
animal — man — and in addition to these characteristics 
of the lower brute creation are the higher attributes 
expressed by intelligence, volition, consciousness. That 
which w^e call the immaterial is differentiated from all 
lower forms of existence by attributes which never 
characterize matter. Life spiritual is that harmonious 
relation in w^hich man lives in communion with his 
Creator, while life eternal is immortality of existence 
in blissfulness of condition. But, whatever may be 
our definitions, life seems to be an impartation rather 
than a creation. There is but one life in the universe, 
the life of God. The Scriptures are accurate in the 
assertion that " in him is life," which has a depth of 
meaning to command our keenest thought and widest 



158 Supremacy of Law. 

research. The old Ilinclns entertained this loftier 
conception of life as an impartation, and said that all 
human lives were parts of tlie infinite life, and as 
drops of water return to the ocean so all souls return 
to the Infinite Father by absorption. Underlying this 
description there is a deep thought, but by them mis- 
understood and misapplied ; for all imparted lives, 
whether of men or of angels, will retain their indi- 
viduality forever. The scriptural history is that after 
man's body was formed the Almighty infiated his 
hmgs and set his heart in motion by breathing into 
his nostrils the breath of his animal life, and added 
thereunto that which we call the soul, which is the 
changeless, immortal life of man. This is the final 
conclusion of Darwin and Wallace, compelled to this 
conclusion by Mivart, a Christian scientist. It may 
be that some scholars commonly called atheists have 
been misunderstood. Huxley would say that proto- 
plasm is the basis of life, which is a fact ; and Tyndall 
has said that all life is from antecedent life, which is 
an expression of the highest truth. 

But life is of immense importance primarily to the 
individual, secondly to society at large. To the indi- 
vidual it is the beginning of his immortality ; given 
for the noble purpose of self-development and for 
that probation from which he is to enter upon the 



Rights of Life. 159 

exalted state of his blissful eternity. Who can contem- 
plate a thought so sublime without placing the highest 
value upon our mortal existence : And as this life ra- 
diates the darkness of death, it flashes its corruscations 
upon the materialism of the day and lights up the 
tomb to the great beyond. To the individual, life is 
the unfolding of his character; it is tlie accumulation 
of those forces which enter so largely into his destiny, 
and to destroy such a life is to interrupt the great 
process of nature and cheat man of his inalienable 
rights. 

Among civilized men there are two estimates of 
the importance and value of human existence : one of 
vanity and contempt, the other of dignity and power. 
The former estimate is largely due to the deplora- 
ble fact that some of our best poets and essayists 
have given expression to thoughts gloomy and con- 
temptuous : 

" Ask what is life — the sage raphes, 

With disappointment low'ring in his eyes, 

A painful passage o'er a restless flood, 

A vain pursuit of fugitive false good, 

A sense of fancied bliss and heartfelt care. 

Closing at last in darkness and despair," — Covjper, 

" When I consider life, His all a cheats 
Yet, fooled with hope, men favor the deceit ; 
Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay : 
To-morrow's falser than the former day ; 



160 SurREMACY OF Law. 

Lies worse ; and, while it says we shall be blest 
With some new joys, cuts off wliat we possest. 

I am tired with waiting for this chemic gold, 

AYhich fools us young, and beggars us when old." — Dry den, 

" Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen, 

Count o'er the days from anguish free. 
And know, whatever thou hast been, 

'Tis something letter not to &e." — Campbell, 

"Who breathes must suffer; and who thinks must mourn, 
And he alone is blest who ne'er was born." — Prior, 

" For time will come with all its blights, 

The ruin'd hope — the friend unkind — 
The love that leaves, where'er it lights, 

A chilled or burning heart behind." — Burns, 

^•Between two worlds life liovers like a star, 

'Twixt night and morn, upon the horizon's verge. 

How little do we know that which we are. 

How less what we may be! The etern .1 surge 

Of time and tide rolls on, and bears afar 
Our bubbles ; as the old burst, new emerge, 

Lash'd from the foam of ages ; while the graves 

•Of empires heave like some passing waves." 

" Well — well, the world must turn upon its axis, 
And all mankind turn with it, heads or tails, 

And live and die, make love, and pay our taxes, 
And as the veering wind shifts, shift our sails, 

The king commands us, and the doctor quacks us, 
The priest instructs, and so our life exhales ; 

A little breath, love, wine, ambition, fame, 

l^"'ighting, devotion, dust — perhaps a name." — Byron, 

" There is nothing in this world can make me joy ; 
Life is as tedious as a thrice-told tale 
Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man." 



Eights of Life. 161 

*'This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth 
The tender leaves of hopes, to morrow blossoms, 
And bears his blushing honors thick upon him, 
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost. 
And, when he thinks, good easy man, full surely 
His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root. 
And then he falls." 

"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, 
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, 
To the last syllable of recorded time ; 
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools 
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle I 
Life is but a walking shadow ; a poor player. 
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage. 
And then is heard no more : it is a tale 
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, 
Signifying nothing.'''^ — Shakespeare. 

'' Life is a jest, and all things show it, 
I thought so once, and now I know it."' 

— Gay^s Epitaph in Westminster Abbey. 

" Behold the child, by Nature's kindly law. 

Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw ; 

Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight, 

A little louder, but as empty quite; 

Scarfs, garters, gold amuse his riper stage ; 

And beads and prayer-books are the toys of age ; 

Pleased with this bauble still, as that before ; 

Till tired he sleeps, and life's poor play is o'er." — Fope. 

And this sad refrain was the sentiment of Buddha : 

" How transient are all component things, 

Growtli is their nature and decay ; 

They are produced, they are dissolved again ; 

And then is best, when they have sunk to rest." 
11 



162 Supremacy of Law. 

Such expressions may be true of a selfish life, but 
not of a life made grand and influential by philan- 
thropy and devotion. 

St. Paul gives a more exalted view in those mem- 
orable words, " For me to live is Christ ; " and the 
Master's conception is higher than the highest when 
he declares " I must work the works of him that sent 
me, while it is day : the night cometh, when no man 
can work." 

In its grander aspect life is a web, time is a shut- 
tle, man is a weaver — ^^My days are swifter than a 
weaver's shuttle." The principle of action is the 
thread in the web ; but two things are true — that 
which enters into the web will re-appear, and nothing 
will re-appear that has not been placed in the web by 
the deeds of man. In our tapestry of life we may 
weave forms of justice, truth, and holiness ; of faith, 
hope, and charity ; of saints, angels, and God ; and 
that tapestry may cover the walls of our mansion of 
blessedness, to excite the wonder and admiration of 
saints and angels. But in that tapestry we may 
weave the form of Silenus, with the ears of an ass, 
surrounded with laughing satyrs and dancing-girls ; 
of Bacchus, holding in his hand the wine-cup, with 
swollen cheeks, bloated body, accompanied by the 
Bacchantes, frenzied and disordered, chanting the 



Rights of Life. 163 

song of the drunkard, and followed by the tiger of 
destruction ; of Mars, reeking with the blood of his 
fellows, ever attended with that horrid retinue, 
clamor, anger, discord, fear, terror, shame, death ; 
of Mercury, filching the arrows of Apollo and the 
girdle of Venus. The web will be all the man makes 
it. It may not always appear what we are weaving. 
The pictured side of life's web is turned toward the 
Infinite ; that which is seen by us is often a mass of 
confused knots and colors. Some fancy they are 
weaving angels; eternity will reveal a devil. Tlie 
Greeks have given us the fable of the fatal sisters to 
illustrate the origin, progress, and termination of life. 
Clotho held the distaff and attached the thread of 
life ; Lachesis, with the spindle, spun off that thread ; 
and Atropos held a pair of scales to w^eigh the thread, 
a sun-dial to measure its length, and a pair of scissors 
to cut it off. These fatal sisters ever attend us. 

From whatever stand-point human life is viewed 
its grandeur is conspicuous. The fact is recognized 
by all governments, under all civilizations. Human 
law conceives an immeasurable distance between the 
life of a man and that of an animal. Indeed, animal 
life is esteemed of value for the comfort and wealth 
of mankind. The State protects useful animals 
against the cruelty and the hunting propensity of 



164 SuPKEMAcr OF Law. 

man, but protects sucli as a polic}', and not as a right. 
It is for the convenience of society, and not because 
there is an inalienable right in the animal. The oil 
of the whale, tlie plumage of the bird, the flesh of 
tlie fowls, flsh, and cattle are for man's use and hap- 
piness. They were made for man, but man himself 
was made for a higher and nobler purpose, and if at 
any time it is right to take the life of a human being 
it is for the safety of society. 

The organic law, " Thou shalt not kill," condemns 
murder, suicide, dueling, war, intemperance, malice, 
indifference, and unkindness. The exceptions are 
self-defense, punishment for crime, and the mainte- 
nance of authority. 

The crime of homicide consists primarily in three 
things : the destruction of the image of God — for 
every man is God in miniature, possessing the attri- 
butes of the Creator in limitation, and bears the 
likeness of the Almighty in a spiritual and intellect- 
ual sense ; for one human being to lay his hand upon 
another is to lay that hand on the image of God, and, 
in a certain sense, upon God himself. It is usurpa- 
tion of the prerogative of the Sovereign of the uni- 
verse, who has the right to create and the right to de- 
stroy. It is also the interruption of the unfolding of 
that individuality to which all have an unquestionable 



Rights of Life. 165 

right, and he who interrupts that unfolding commits 
a crime against mankind. It is robbing society of 
an individual life the influences of which might 
have gone forth as so many beneficent streams 
issuing from the fountain of goodness. Society de- 
pends largely upon its individual component parts, 
out of which come public opinion and public con- 
science. It is thus the community is built up in its 
multiform relations, its education is advanced, its 
religion is promulgated, and civilization attains its 
loftiest results. By the protection of the individual 
society reaps the golden harvest of purity, charity, 
and devotion. 

But the original law is not confined to homicide ; 
it has a vaster amplitude and a more solemn compre- 
hension. The deaths from homicide are but a fraction 
of the whole number who annually depart this life. 
The annual death rate of the population of our coun- 
try is estimated at 700,000, of which number there 
were 1,336 homicides. We must therefore look 
deeper for the application of this fundamental law of 
God to man, and see how its application is made to 
other causes of death and other forms of crime. 
While murder is esteemed the worst of crimes that 
can be committed against society, and is to be con- 
demned in the severest sense, yet it presents but one 



166 Supremacy of Law. 

phase of the great law of life; for tliis law is just as 
applicable to suicide as it is to homicide. In 1880 
there were 1,336 homicides and 2,314 suicides. Of 
the latter number 1,817 were males and 497 females. 
- There is a looseness in public sentiment touching the 
right of suicide. The great mastei's of moral philoso- 
phy have borne no uncertain testimony against the 
right of self-destruction. There are times when de- 
spondency takes possession of men, when life seems a 
failure and when men say ^' the fates are against me ; " 
that " life is not worth living." In such a supreme mo- 
ment as this they dispatch themselves into the pres- 
ence of their Creator unbidden, with life's duties un- 
done and its responsibilities unmet. It is a mistake 
to suppose that suicide is largely from cowardice. 
The greatest characters in history have thus ended 
their existence. There is such a thing as despair : 
when the buoyancy of the spirit has departed and 
dejection covers the soul like a cloud of darkness, 
when hope has fled and melancholy has seized the 
spirit, when joy is a stranger to the mind and grief is 
ever present, when friends appear as enemies, when 
disaster, defeat, and ruin haunt the imagination, when 
death welcomes the victor to its eternal silence and to 
the rest of the grave. This is despair. It may spring 
from temperament, sickness, misfortune, unbelief. 



Rights of Life. 167 

bereavement, intemperance. How vast the army of 
suicides headed by Samson, Saul, the son of Kish, 
Hannibal, Cato, and Brutus ! "Whether suicidq is 
ever justifiable is an open question, especially when 
there is nothing left for the individual to do but to die, 
as when in a house on fire or in a wilderness exposed 
to the ferocity of wild beasts. The Bible gives ac- 
count of no tlioroughly good man w^ho has dispatched 
himself; but the great sufferers in biblical history 
have endured patiently, as when David sings, " I 
waited patiently for the Lord ; " as when Jeremiah de- 
clares, " It is good that a man should both hope and 
quietly wait;" as when St. Paul triumphantly ex- 
claims, ^'I reckon that the sufferings of this present 
time are not worthy to be compared with the glory 
which shall be revealed in us." Perhaps there is no 
part of that great epic, the book of Job, that is more 
intensely affecting than when in his extremity, with 
children gone, wealth gone, health gone, his wife 
whispered, " Suicide, Job ; curse God and die." But, 
rallying in the grandeur of his faith, he triumphantly 
exclaimed, " All the days of my appointed time will I 
wait, till my change come." 

There is a question among some physiologists of to- 
day, and the question is coming to the front more and 
more, whether life is worth saving in those afflicted 



168 Supremacy of Law. 

with a chronic disease, who are beyond the scope of 
science, for whom there is no known restoration. Is 
it true science to perpetuate the life of such? May 
not the dictates of reason and of love suggest that in 
their case life should be permitted to end in a super- 
induced sleep, in the interests of a common humanity ? 
Tliis is not a new thought. It is as old as Plato, who 
suggested that the science of medicine was designed 
only for those who have temporary and curable ail- 
ments. But a truer science should place a higher es- 
timation upon human existence and cherish life until 
the last respiration. Such a feeling is akin to the 
tenderness displayed for a deformed child, whose ap- 
parent life is a misery, but who is cared for with 
sweeter caresses, and largely so because its little 
broken body, pressed so tenderly to the mother's 
bosom and guarded with such gracious care by the 
father's love, is looked upon not merely as a physical 
fragment but the home of a spirit within, winged for 
a glorious immortality. 

This ancient law of Mount Sinai not only covers 
the extreme cases of murder and suicide, but all 
causes leading to premature death. A blasted life by 
dissipation is only another form of self-destruction. 
How many have gone to an untimely grave who 
should now be in the splendor of manhood, with the 



Rights of Life. 169 

roseate flush of health upon their manly cheek ! Is not 
society bound to look into those causes resulting in self- 
destruction ? What a fearful crime rests upon the 
great cities of our country from the liabits of inebriety, 
under the protection of law ! How vast the number 
who have inflamed their nervous system, deranged 
their digestion, poisoned their blood by intemperance ! 
How the figures stand out against this social evil ! If 
the death rates in this country are 700,000 annually, 
the deaths from intemperance are over 60,000, and 
that out of a drunken population of 600,000. 60,000, 
human beings who have committed suicide by this 
slow process! Dr. Kerr, the eminent English statis- 
tician, has said that the deaths by drunkenness in Great 
Britain amount to 120,000 a year ; that over 40,000 
are attributable directly to excessive drinking, and over 
79,000 to the accidents, to violence and other causes 
incident to drunkenness. The insurance companies of 
the world bring out some startling facts. They keep 
two tables ; the one they call the temperance section, 
the other the general section — in which all persons are 
included, without regard to their social habits. In an 
estimate running through seventeen years these com- 
panies estimated that there would be 2,644 deaths. 
These were the expected deaths. Among the tem- 
perance people there died in those seventeen years 



170 Supremacy of Law. 

1,861. In the general section tliey estimated that 
during that period the deaths would amount to 4,480, 
and they did amount to 4,339. Temperance favors 
length of days. What, then, shall we say as to this 
enormous evil ; of the statesmen who refuse to act, the 
ministers and physicians who decline their influence 
to rescue human life from such destruction ? What 
can be said in justification of the thousands engaged 
in the liquor traffic, who cause this progressive suicide 
of our fellow-citizens ? 

This divine law of life is as minute in its appli- 
cation as it is comprehensive in its requirements. 
Where life is imperiled, from whatever cause, a re- 
fusal to aid the lielpless and comfort the distressed, 
when within the range of possibilities to aid and rescue, 
the law condemns such refusal as violative of its be- 
nign spirit. This law makes each man the preserver 
of the life of every other man. The dictates of reason 
and the precepts of religion demand that you should 
rescue a man from a burning house, from a watery 
grave, from a state of starvation. In its higher range 
of thought it demands the advancement of those sci- 
ences which preserve health and prolong human ex- 
istence. It is our duty to found dispensaries, hospitals, 
orphanages, in the interests of health and life, and 
it is the glory of Christianity that wherever it is 



Eights of Life. 171 

practiced there life is esteemed, preserved, prolonged. 
Christianity abolished the gladiatorial combats and 
thereby saved the flower of Rome. By its benevolent 
power life is removed from the cruelty of those des- 
pots who kill their subjects at will. By its softening 
influence on civil legislation sanguinary laws have 
been modified so that men are no longer put to death 
for offenses of comparatively trifling demerit. In 
China the life of the criminal is in the hands of the 
magistrate for crimes other than murder ; but in Chris- 
tian lands only those offenses which sacrifice or im- 
peril human life are punislied with death, and there 
is a strong public tendency to abolish the death penalty 
in the interest of mercy. This may be excessive, but 
hanging should be superseded by some other mode of 
capital punishment. It is true that God has ordained 
that he w^ho takes life shall forfeit life^'^ Whoso 
sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed : 
for in the image of God made he man." But when 
a higher Christian civilization shall prevail this modi- 
fication shall be a realization. 

Ther6 is, however, a vaster sweep in this law of life, 
comprehensive of those sanitary conditions which are 
promotive of human existence. It is a startling fact 
that from one third to one half of all persons born 
into the world die before reaching the age of five years. 



172 SUPKEMACY OF LaW. 

This terrible reality, from another point of view, is 
more apparent in the fact that the child which has 
completed its fifth year actually has an expectation of 
life more than twelve years greater than it had at its 
birth. The younger tlie child the larger is the death 
rate. More than half of those who die under five 
years of age die in their first year. In all the great 
cities of our own country, out of every one hundred 
live-born children about twenty-five die before the 
end of tlie first year, and from forty to fifty before the 
close of the fifth year. These facts challenge our at- 
tention and demand our consideration. The diseases 
by which infancy is thus swept from the face of the 
earth are traceable to causes that have tlieir remedy in 
a sanitation dictated by science. Among the fruitful 
causes of these earlier deaths are heredity, poverty, 
exposure to cold and wet, excessive heat, improper 
feeding, filth, and overcrowding. The common tene- 
ment-house in our great cities is the charnel-house of 
infancy. Whatever may be the advantages of great 
cities, the death rate of infancy corresponds to the 
density of population. The remedy of these causes 
is within the reach of the wealthy, the philanthropic, 
and the scientific. 

In its grander sweep this beneficent law of life in- 
cludes the existence of nationalities. The right of a 



Rights of Life. 173 

nation to defend itself on the principles of justice 
tallies with the right of the individual to defend him- 
self. Some wars are as holy in the sight of the 
Almighty as the prayers that are offered by the 
Church ; for wherever liberty is at stake, wherever 
despotism is to be resisted, wherever imperial indi- 
vidualism is to be confronted, then it is the right of 
a nation to rise in its strength, to defend its laws 
and perpetuate its institutions. But such wars are the 
exception. There are a few warriors in the history of 
the world who will be esteemed great benefactors of 
mankind because they drew the sword for human 
rights. The thoughtful student of history enters the 
crypt of Saint Paul's, London, to place a chaplet of 
immortality upon the mausoleum of some Wellington; 
and in our own country there sleep the sleep of the 
just, in graves of glory, men who fought for human 
rights, and in all coming time" their resting-place 
will be holy shrines around which coming generations 
will chant anthems to the God of our fathers — who 
nerved the arm of the heroic, inspired in them the 
loftiest courage, and induced a tenacity of will which 
no foe could disturb ; they are the men who drew the 
sword for our constitutional liberty and the perpetuity 
of our Union. 

But what shall we say about those wars for glory, 



174 Supremacy of Law. 

for empire, for commerce ? If Bacchus has slain his 
millions, what shall we say of Bellona? for her gar- 
ments drip with blood, her hands are ever stained, her 
eyes are filled with delight with the horrid butchery 
on the field of carnage. Burke formed his estimate 
of the number slain in war, and made that number 
equal to thirty times the present population of the 
globe — more than thirty billions. Dick — who was ac- 
customed to count the stars — falls a little short of that 
astounding estimate ; yet the number is not fixed too 
high. This earth is a battle-field. The mounds of 
Magenta and Solferino, along the roadside between 
Turin and Venice, are vast tombs wherein sleep the 
heroic dead who died for glory and for empire. Our 
earth is one vast cemetery, filled with the victims of 
men who have plowed the fields with the plowshare 
of destruction to gratify their thirst for glory, but 
whose names will go down to posterity the synonym 
of infamy, to be execrated to the last generation 
of time as those born to be a curse to virtue and man- 
kind. The verdicts of history are now being changed. 
The warriors whose names once awakened shouts of 
applause are now regarded as human monsters. 
Their sad end was merited by their bloody career. 
Behold the end of four of these greatest warriors: 
Alexander di^d in a drunken revel at Babylon ; 



Eights of Life. 175 

Hannibal commited suicide by poison in Bithynia, 
Asia, unwept and unhonored in a foreign land ; Csesar 
was murdered in Rome, at the base of Pompey's 
Pillar ; Napoleon died in exile on an island in an 
unfrequented sea. 

The time will come in the interest of a common hu- 
manity and in obedience to this ancient law — " Thou 
shalt not kill," when all nations shall revere its au- 
thority and bow obediently to its behests. . At this 
very hour its divine law is deterring all Europe from 
a murderous strife. Were it not for it, what a slaughter 
would follow the onset, the like of which would be 
without parallel in the history of the world ! " Thou 
shalt not kill " holds back the Czar of Russia, restrains 
the Emperor of Germany, cools the ardor of the 
French, keeps the King of Italy steady upon the 
throne, and intimidates Francis Joseph. Let this law 
have full play in its majesty, and beneficent arbitra- 
tion will become a fact, when all nations shall gather 
in a universal congress to settle international ques- 
tions on the score of justice and equity. Americans 
have led in this grand advance. He who sleeps on the 
banks of the Hudson had the honor of inaugurating 
a system of arbitration, and so long as Geneva shall 
stand on the shores of its magnificent lake, through 
which fiow the waters of the Rhone, so long will his 



176 Supremacy of Law. 

name be associated with tlie peaceful adjustment of 
international questions ; and when the '' Parliament of 
the World " shall meet, among the illustrious figures in 
bronze or marble shall be the form of him — greater 
than William the Silent, greater than England's Iron 
Duke, greater than the prisoner of St. Helena — who 
^.wakened the glad acclaim of a universe to chime his 
immortal utterance, '^Let us have peace." 

The call of to-day is, " Let us have arbitration." 
We should lead the van ; every statesman should be 
for peace. The old war-cry, " I am for war," should 
be superseded by the better declaration, " I am for 
peace." Then shall come, in harmony with the dic- 
tates of this great principle, the reign of kindness and 
the realization of the beatitude of Him who said : — 
" Blessed are the peacemakers ; for they shall be 
<jalled the children of God." 



Eights of Property. 177 



YIII. 

BIGHTS OF PKOPERTY. 

IS it a crime to be rich? Against whom is the 
offense committed ? Against God ? Against man ? 
Against society? Underlying the amplest fortunes 
are inflexible truth, incorruptible honesty, incompar- 
able honor. Industry, frugality, economy, are the 
changeless laws of wealth, and in keeping thereof 
many have risen from indigence to affluence. Lazarus 
was not more virtuous than Abraham ; the former a 
pauper, the latter a millionaire. 

Poverty, competence, and affluence are the three 
flnancial conditions of man — in each of which there 
may be sainthood. Poverty may be as vicious upon 
the morals of character and life as wealth. The rich 
are not the criminal classes of society ; they represent 
the average virtue of Christian lands. The reign of 
terror against wealth is itself a crime. It is without 
reason, without justification, without excuse, and those 
who aid and abet it are chief offenders. 

Is it misanthropic to be rich ? Do large possessions 

in land and money sour the milk of human kindness 
12 



178 SUPKEMACY OF LaW. 

that flows through the veins of humanity ? To whom 
are we indebted for those houses of charity whose 
gates of mercy stand open night and day ? Who are 
the founders of those libraries which spread their 
ample feast before mankind ? "Who opened to the 
indigent student of our land those scientific and pro- 
fessional schools whereby the humblest may rise to 
the highest ? The universities and colleges of our 
country are the monuments of the rich. The most 
popular institute in New York, where any woman 
may learn to be an artist and any man an artisan, 
whose very name has filled Christendom with delight, 
is the honorable work of a man who left two millions 
to his two children. Is he despised ? The National 
Temperance Publishing Society, whose life-giving 
literature is to-day blessing our nation, is largely the 
work of another citizen of America's great metropolis, 
who bequeathed to his widow and seven sons more 
than a million and a half of dollars. Is he damned ? 
Every State in the South is to-day the beneficiary of 
the wealth of a merchant prince who died worth 
millions, and the memorials of his princely giving 
are in London, in Baltimore, and in his native Massa- 
chusetts. Is he reprobated ? 

Is it unpatriotic to be rich ? Then Mount Yernon 
and Monticello would not be shrines of American 



Eights of Property. 179 

patriotism, to which we hasten with delight to revere 
the memory of deathless names. In the three great 
wars for the Union the rich poured forth their wealth 
as the rain descends upon the just and upon the 
unjust. Who does not recall, with national pride and 
gratitude, the munificent sums given by the wealthy 
for the suppression of the late rebellion ? Love of 
country rose supreme above the love of money. Is^ot 
a decade has passed since there died a citizen of ISTew 
York at whose funeral were the President of the 
United States, the greatest of living soldiers and 
statesmen, and men of all ranks of distinction. The 
illustrious dead will be known as " the War Governor 
of New York," wliose ardent patriotism was only ex- 
celled by his benevolence, wlio died leaving three and 
a half millions to his widow and a grandson. Wealth 
is not disloyalty. The capitalists of this country sup- 
ported the government in the darkest hour of the re- 
bellion, when the national treasury was in sore distress. 
And who shall tell of the regiments raised and equipped, 
the sanitary and Christian commissions supported, and 
the provision made for the families of the soldiers who 
had gone to the front ? And who to-day are at the 
head of those vast financial enterprises which make the 
United States the richest nation on the face of the 
globe ? They are men who control vast sums of money. 



180 Supremacy of Law. 

Is it tyranny to be rich ? Do wealth and oppression 
go hand in hand ? Are slavery and opulence born 
of the same parentage ? Wilberf orce was rich, yet 
foremost in the abolition of slavery in the British 
colonies. Gerrit Smith died worth his millions ; 
yet he was the most eloquent, most ardent, most 
benevolent of abolitionists. Who to-day are the 
public enemies of those oppressions in the social 
world which grind the face of the poor ? Are they 
not the Christian capitalists of our land ? Who 
are the foremost patrons of those philanthropic or- 
ganizations whose merciful mission is to give dignity 
to labor, education to the " working-classes," time for 
mental and moral improvement to the sons of manual 
toil ? Are they not those whose industry and enterprise 
have raised them to affluence ? 

Is it impiety to be rich ? Is poverty essential to 
godliness ? Are beggars the only saints ? Is heaven 
a poor-house ? What then shall we do with Abraham, 
who was very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold ? 
What then shall we do with Job, who had seven 
thousand sheep, three thousand camels, four thousand 
oxen, five hundred asses ; who had thirty thousand 
acres and three thousand household servants? At 
this distance of time, after the lapse of three thousand 
years, it is difiicult to estimate Job's wealth according 



Rights of Property. ISl 

to our standard, but the items given in sacred history 
would place his possessions at that distant period not 
less than $375,000, and at the close of the wonderful 
story of his life his wealth was duplicated, making in 
all about $750,000. Compare this with the relative 
present value of money with that of Job's time. What 
then shall we do with Solomon, who " made silver to 
be in Jerusalem as stones, and cedars made he to be 
as the sycamore-trees that are in the vale for 
abundance," and "whose ships came once in three 
years bringing gold and silver, and ivory and apes 
and peacocks, so that King Solomon exceeded, all the 
kings of the earth for riches and wisdom.'' The good 
Jehoshaphat " had riches and honors and abundance, 
and the pious Hezekiah "had exceeding large riches 
and honor," for whose sake the Lord caused the 
shadow to return backward ten degrees on the sun- 
dial of Ahaz. There is but one saintly beggar men- 
tioned in the Bible, while the saintly rich are like 
the stars of heaven. Christ would not have had a 
decent tomb had it not been for the rich Joseph of 
Arimathea. The first Gentile convert was known 
in heaven for the wealth of liis charities, who is 
proof that " godliness is profitable unto all things, 
having the promise of the life that now is and that 
which is to come." Kind Heaven has promised 



182 Supremacy of Law. 

wealth to the industrious, the frugal, and the enter- 
prising : 

" Tlie Lord maketli poor and he maketli rich." 

Tlie Lord said to Solomon, " I have given thee 
both riches and honor." 

" The generations of the upright shall be blessed ; 
wealth and riches shall be in his house." 

" By humility, and the fear of the Lord, are riches, 
and honor, and life." 

" Tliou preparest a table before me in the presence 
of mine enemies: my cup runneth over." 

"Trust in the Lord and do good: so shalt thou 
dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed." 

" Honor the Lord with tliy substance, and with the 
first-fruits of thine increase : so shall thy barns be 
filled with plenty, and thy presses shall burst out 
with new wine." 

" Be diligent in business." 

The acquisition of wealth is a divine gift. Industry 
and frugality are the laws of thrift. To amass great 
fortunes is a special endowment. As poets, philoso- 
phers, and orators are born such, so the financier has 
a genius for wealth. By intuition he is familiar with 
the laws of supply and demand. He seems gifted 
with the vision of a seer of the comino; chano-es in the 
market ; he knows when to buy and when to sell and 



Rights of Pkoperty. 183 

when to hold fast. He anticipates the flow of popu- 
lation and its effect upon real estate. As the poet 
must sing because the muse is in him, so the financier 
must make money. He cannot help it. The endow- 
ment of this gift is announced in Scripture : " Tlie 
Lord thy God giveth thee the power to get wealth ' ' 
(Deut. yiii, 18). And all these promises are illustrated 
in the present financial condition of Christian nations, 
who control the finances of the world. 

Against these natural and lawful rights to the 
possession of property is the clamor for the dis- 
tribution of property among those who have not ac- 
quired it, either by inheritance or skill or industry. It 
is a communism that has no foundation either in the 
constitution of nature or in the social order of man- 
kind. It is the wild, irrational cry of labor against 
capital, between which, in the economy of nature and 
in political economy, there should be no common 
antagonism. There is a wealth of muscle and a 
wealth of brain and a wealth of character. He is a 
laborer who does productive work ; lie is a capitalist 
who has five dollars or five hundred thousand dollars. 
Capital may be a tyrant, and Labor may become a 
despot. The employer and the employed have in- 
violable rights; the former to employ whom he can 
for what he can, and the latter to respond when he 



184 Supremacy of Law. 

can. The env}'' of the poor and the jealousy of the 
laboring classes are not excited against those who 
possess vast fortunes, but against the supreme ease 
and the supreme indifference of the rich. 

Wealth has the noblest of missions. It is not given 
to hoard, nor to gratify, nor for the show of pomp 
and power. The rich are the almoners of the Al- 
mighty. They are his disbursing agents. They are 
the guardians of the poor. They are to inaugurate 
those great enterprises which will bring thrift to the 
masses ; not the largest dividends, but the largest 
prosperity. Capital makes it possible for the laborer 
to enjoy a happiness that Avaits upon honest industry. 
It is for the rich to improve the homes of the poor ; 
but many a rich man's stable is a palace compared to 
the abode of the honest and intelligent mechanic's. 
When the wealthy are the patrons of those social re- 
forms that elevate society, then they will receive the 
benedictions of the poor. It is for them to give 
direction to the legislation essential for the protection 
of all the rights and interests of a community. When 
they build libraries of learning, museums of art, and 
temples of piety they will be esteemed the benefactors 
of their kind. When the wealth of capital joins 
hands with the wealth of intellect, the wealth of 
muscle, and the w^ealth of goodness for the common 



Rights of Property. 185 

good, then labor and capital will be esteemed the 
equal factors in giving every man life, liberty, and the 
pursuit of happiness. 

The right to property is found in nature, sustained 
by organized society, and protected by the sanctions 
of the divine law. This right has its origin in a prior 
fact, that each human being is a distinct individuality, 
adapted to all the purposes of self-government and 
responsible to God and to society for the manner in 
which his powers are employed. By his j)hysical 
nature he is connected with the universe which is 
modified to supply his wants. He is so created that 
he is dependent on the air, the sunshine, and the prod- 
ucts of the soil for the continuance of his life, and that 
end is attained as he puts forth his natural powers 
and extracts from the universe that on which he can 
subsist. He has a right to use his body as he will, 
provided such use is not an interference with the 
equal rights of his fellow-men. Possessing an intel- 
lect, he has a right to the products thereof. He may 
investigate this subject or that, entertain such con- 
clusions as his investigations may teach, and publish 
these conclusions for his own benefit, provided they 
do not work injury to the happiness of others. En- 
dowed wdth a soul of sensibilities, passions, and aspi- 
rations, he has the inherent right to seek happiness, 



186 Supremacy of Law. 

always recognizing a common right in each of his 
fellow creatures. By this physical, intellectual, and 
spiritual endowment man is made for society, and 
each individual in his social capacity is bound to every 
other individual by the law or reciprocity. If, by the 
constitution of nature, a man has a right to himself, 
he has also an equal right to that which may result 
from the innocent use of his bodily and mental pow- 
ers. The result is what men call property. In all 
well-regulated society every man is accorded the right 
to possess that which he has made, and the power of 
control over the same. He has not only the right to 
a piece of gold by discovery or purchase or labor, but, 
when he fashions the same into a work of art, his 
right is increased by virtue of his skill. Around this 
sacred right divine and human laws throw their awful 
sanctions. " Thou shalt not steal " is the command of 
high Heaven. The Creator treats this right as a self- 
evident fact, directs his mandates against every act 
violative of the same and against the temper of mind 
from which such violations may proceed. In harmony 
therewith human governments among their first acts 
protect this individual right, and treat the offender 
thereof as guilty of a wrong, and punish him ac- 
cordingly. 

Upon the recognition of this right depend the 



Eights of Pkopekty. 187 

existence and progress of society. Ignore this right, 
and no one would labor more than is sufficient for liis 
individual subsistence, as lie would have no more 
right than any other person to the surplus; and there 
would therefore be no accumulation, no provision for 
the future, no means by which improvements could 
be made ; there would be no noble cities, no elegant 
homes, no invented means of travel, no advanced 
civilization. This question involves the distinction 
between the savagery of the barbarian and the refine- 
ments and comforts of civilized life. A nation of 
thieves would be a nation of barbarians. 

If such are the principles and consequences involved 
in this right of property, what are the violations of 
this right ? The burglar takes the property of another 
without the knowledge and consent of the owner ; this 
is theft ; the higwayman takes the property of an- 
other with his knowledge, but without his consent. 
He may demand the traveler's purse on the alterna- 
tive of taking his life ; the traveler may surrender his 
money to save his life from the highwayman. The 
highwayman has no right to present such an alterna- 
tive ; compelling the traveler to yield does not change 
the moral character of the act, which is robbery. Not 
less guilty is he who presents wrong motives for 
the purposes of gain, who excites groundless fears, 



188 Supremacy of Law. 

circulates false reports, inflames personal vanity, and 
awakens avarice for the purposes of illegal gain. A 
broker on 'Change who causes false information to be 
circulated for the purpose of raising or depressing 
the market seeks profit by deep rascality. God says 
to such a man, " Thou shalt not steal." When, in the 
day of plenty, a shrewd, unscrupulous speculator 
by well-laid plans monopolizes a useful article to 
create an artificial scarcity, and thus raises the price 
while the supply is abundant, he causes the poor man 
to suffer, and is himself a robber. Business transac- 
tions are too often a test of personal sharpness. 

Society is held together by the golden bonds of 
mutual confidence ; men must have faith in each 
other's integrity. It is a principle which holds to- 
gether man and wife, parent and child, employer and 
employed, friend and friend, tlie governed and the gov- 
ernment. To a great extent mutual confidence un- 
derlies all business transactions. Such honor is no less 
necessary to commercial life than it is a moral duty. 
Human nature never appears to better advantage than 
when men prove true and honorable amid the multi- 
form temptations of business life. There are times 
when a person is so circumstanced as to intrust his 
property to another ; for the party to imperil that 
property in speculation is a wanton betrayal of that 



Rights of Pjroperty. 189 

trust and a dishonest transaction. In the moment of 
temptation the custodian of intrusted funds specu- 
lates and loses, and pleads in extenuation the sincerity 
of his motives — that he did not intend to lose said 
property, but to restore it in full when success 
crowned his speculations ; but over against his plea of 
sincerity is his crime of greed, which is his condem- 
nation. 

The highest form of trust and honor is displayed on 
the part of society in selecting citizens to administer 
the affairs of civil government. When that trust is 
betrayed for purposes of personal gain, and that honor 
tarnished by official corruption, the offense assumes a 
deeper dye and the criminahty a deeper turpitude. 
There cannot be a sadder spectacle on earth than for 
a man sitting in God's stead on the tribunal of jus- 
tice to receive a bribe to " blind therewith his eyes " 
and pervert his judgment ; or for a legislator, chosen to 
make laws for a people, to be party to corrupt legis- 
lation to enrich himself at the expense of the public 
welfare and tlie wealth of the people ; or for an ex- 
ecutive to appropriate to himself that which a too- 
confiding people have intrusted to his honesty and his 
honor. 

As we rise in the apparent scale of moral responsi- 
bility — from the midnight burglar, the murderous 



190 Supremacy of Law. 

liigliwayman, tlie shrewd trickery of the merchant and 
the buyer, the treachery of the friend, and the crafty 
speculator, to him who fills official position, we are 
apt to attach greater guilt to the dishonest acts of the 
latter ; for there are moral elements which enter into 
his deeds of dishonesty that give a criminality to his 
offense that cannot be ascribed to the dishonest act of 
a private citizen. To his dishonesty he adds hypoc- 
risy; under the robes of office there is a duplicity 
which merits public execration. He moves through 
society with the apostolic exterior of Judas, but upon 
his soul are the cankered spots of the " tliirty pieces 
of silver." To his duplicity he adds treachery, for 
he has betrayed the public confidence and proved un- 
worthy the high trust committed to his keeping. To 
his deceit he has added perjury, for his oath of office 
had been invested with all the attributes of religious 
devotion. God had been called upon to witness to the 
promise of his fidelity, but lie has disregarded his 
solemn oath and his honor has been blighted by his 
official corruption. To all those elements of his in- 
iquity he has added his nefarious example. 

Among the prevalent causes of the violation of 
man's right of property are a corrupt public senti- 
ment, an inordinate love of wealth, an extravagance 
which amounts to prodigality. 



Rights of Property. 191 

Society scourges the thief of necessity, but pities 
the thief of fashion. He who steals a loaf of bread to 
feed his starving family is sent to jail, but he who is 
successful in bold, dishonorable speculation, by which 
others are ruined, is caressed by society. There are 
men whose every thought is vile, whose every impulse 
is vicious, who have grown gray in the accumulation 
of ill-gotten gain, but who are welcomed wherever they 
choose to go into the fashionable circles of life. 
This is the result of a debased public conscience. 

Why is it that official dishonesty is considered less 
disreputable than dishonesty in a private citizen ? A 
public man guilty of many flagrant sins is treated 
with consideration, while the private individual, less 
guilty, is shunned as a pestilential criminal. Does 
the dignity of his office cover him like a cloak ? Does 
his position of trust and power commend him to our 
respect ? Do we dread to incur his displeasure ? Do 
his eminent abilities awaken our admiration ? Does 
his good fortune in having been chosen by the people 
demand our consideration ? Is he less guilty for all 
this? Eather is it not because the public conscience 
is depraved ? Is it not true that all w^e demand of an 
official is to reflect the public conscience ? If he rises 
above it is he not denounced ? If he falls below it is 
he not condoned ? 



192 Supremacy of Law. 

In all ages, under all forms of goverment, official 
corruption has prevailed. Men have taken advantage 
of places of trust and power for personal gain ; brought 
guilt upon themselves and dishonor upon their coun- 
try. But to what extent is public sentiment respon- 
sible for this result ? When we see the tricks of the 
merchant and his customer, the avaricious capitalist, 
the overreaching schemes of the speculator, the 
crushing monopoly of moneyed institutions, the gi- 
gantic struggle among men every-where for the gold 
that perishes, may we not expect the vileness of cor- 
ruption will penetrate the body politic ? Nay, more. 
When those who are called the foremost citizens be- 
leaguer halls of state and national legistation for the 
passage of bills, and for a consideration induce legis- 
lators to vote for their measure, is not the tempter 
worse than the tempted ? When citizens, overanxious 
to obtain office, deliberately offer a consideration to 
others for their influence, is not the offerer the greater 
offender? When a people rolling in wealth, and ac- 
cumulating hundreds of thousands a year, require men 
of larger ability to serve them as public officials for 
a pittance so small that a lirst-class clerk in commer- 
cial circles would despise it, is it marvelous that the 
cupidity of such a people should work corruption in 
official life ? When the fountain shall purify itself, 



Rights of Property. 193 

then shall issue the streams of purity. When the physi- 
cian has healed himself, then his advice will be more 
effectual. When the people shall raise the standard of 
morality and demand that public men shall follow their 
example, then shall honor and honesty characterize 
the administration of government. 

If from the official w^ho reflects public sentiment we 
turn to the "private life of a nation we shall not be 
surprised to discover the inordinate love of riches a 
prevalent and fruitful cause of the violation of the 
ancient law of property. A miser may be honest ; the 
avaricious may be honorable ; but the highest author- 
ity has said, '' The love of money is the root of all 
evil." In this epigrammatic sentence there is a distinc- 
tion between wealth honorably acquired and the love 
of wealth, that leads to evil. The strife of the world 
to-day is for wealth, and to reach the goal men do not 
strive lawfully ; in the attainment of their object pro- 
fessedly good men do as they would not be done by. 
The thought absorbs their working-hours and fills even 
the hours of the night. When they fail they over- 
reach ; when despondent they become unscrupulous ; 
when brought to the verge of ruin they meditate 
crimes against man and sins against God. Such is the 
greed for gain that justice, truth, honesty, are set at 

defiance. Men combine in vast monopolies to control 
13 



194 Supremacy of Law. 

vast wealth. All must bow to this shrine of Mam- 
mon. What is the dominant thought in the life of the 
world to-day ? Is it the value of education ? The 
purity of marriage ? The elevation of the laboring 
classes ? Is it not revenue, private and public ? Out of 
this condition of things come financial panics with the 
regularity of clock-work. These struggles in the 
moneyed centers of the world cannot be logically traced 
to the resources of nature or to Providence. " Seed-time 
and harvest " are promised, and never universally fail. 
At all times health may be said to be national, with 
here and there an epidemic. Out of the natural and 
artificial wants of mankind flow a prosperous com- 
merce at all times ; but the causes of these financial 
interruptions are moral. Labor, prudence, economy, 
are ignored. To acquire wealth without toil is the 
dream of the many. The bold attempt is made to 
force prosperity — to get rich in a day. As well 
might a man attempt to force the harvest. 

The most conspicuous representative of the inordi- 
nate love of wealth is the financial prodigy who at- 
tracts, lures, ruins. Wise, careful, honorable financiers 
rarely fail, and rarely, if ever, they are the cause of 
financial panics ; but rather the financial prodigy, 
whose brilliancy dazzles, whose success captivates, 
whose unscrupulousness is hidden by the splendor of 



Rights of Property. 195 

his operations. Within twenty years three panics 
have been caused in New York by young men, two 
of whom were less than twenty. Each was the son of 
a minister, and had forgotten the God of his father. 
One was a banker, one a broker, one a confidential 
clerk. Two died homeless and penniless in self-exile, 
and one is in the penitentiary. Each had a genius 
for finance. At the early age of twenty-two, one was 
president of a bank. The bank w^as a success. His 
personal speculations brought him large returns ; the 
venerable directors encouraged him in his career. He 
was esteemed a wonder in the financial world. But 
his aged father trembled for the future of his son. 
When the young banker had accumulated $200,000 
the father begged him to be content and stop ; but 
the son was sure that he could make a million. 
Temptations multiplied ; honesty was suspended ; ad- 
versity came ; the golden bubble burst ; detection fol- 
lowed. The young banker fled from home, friends, 
and country, and died a penniless stranger in a strange 
land. 

The life-story, with few variations, is the life-story 
of the confidential clerk, and the final story of the 
third is yet to be told. 

Let us pause and pronounce a eulogy upon the 
young financier of brilliant business talents ; sagacious. 



196 Supremacy of Law. 

industrious, prudent, enterprising, energetic, intelli- 
gent, honest, honorable. Of such an one we might 
glory. But let no one trust the financial prodigy. 
How strange, yet how immense, is his influence often 
over older and wiser men ! How consummate his 
personal attractions ! How pleasing his address ! How 
winnino^ his manners ! His imasrination is the master 
faculty. As a conversationalist he is most persuasive. 
By the magic of his words the false seems true, the 
fictitious real, the impossible probable. His hope- 
fulness is contagious. His dreams of fortune seem 
real to him, and he makes them appear real to others. 
His self-confidence is boundless. All things are possi- 
ble to the faith of his imagination. He is equal to 
every emergency. His capacious mind is a store-house 
of information. He knows the history of each, 
whether banker, broker, or merchant. He is posted 
as to the condition of the moneyed institutions around 
him. There are no securities with which he is not fa- 
miliar. To him the market is a multiplication-table, 
and at his command. He answers all conceivable 
objections. He gives facts and figures. He speaks 
with the confidence of an oracle. Why do men trust 
]iim? Success attends his early ventures. It is 
whispered that he is the favorite of fortune. Rumor 
claims that he lias a financial charm. He is envied, 



Rights of Property. 197 

petted, courted, feasted, trusted. He is a living won- 
der. His credit is limitless. Credulity is blind in his 
presence. The oldest and the ablest confide their fort- 
unes to him. He handles millions. His methods are 
not questioned. Dividends are facts ; ask no questions 
for conscience' sake. He lives under a charm. He 
fancies that fortune is his slave. His vanity increases 
and his audacity grows with his success. At length 
fortune fails him. He commits his first indiscretion. 
Prevarication follows. His evil genius enslaves him. 
Deception is his devil. Confidence is betrayed. Hon- 
esty is outraged. Fraud is committed. His " Black 
Friday " has come. The sheriff arrests him. The 
dungeon awaits him. His day of extravagance is 
ended ; money gone, jewels sold, fast horses seized. 
The banquet hall is forsaken. His victims cry for 
vengeance. They put their money into his bottomless 
pit. Hard-earned fortunes are gone. The widow^'s 
staff is broken. The orphan's heritage is wasted. 
The confidence of a retired merchant is lost. Trade 
is injured and a hundred millions have been lost by 
the shrinkage of stocks ; and, in one instance, within 
three years, the shrinkage in the value of stocks and 
bonds was more than our national debt. 

Closely allied with this invasion of the rights of 
property is the prevalent vice of gambling, the abuse of 



198 Supremacy of Law. 

an innocent pastime. It ignores the law of equivalent. 
It is something for nothing. All industry, all trade, 
all legitimate business is based on the broad principle 
of something for something. The winner gives noth- 
ing in exchange for the property he takes. He is not 
a thief, but he is a robber. The loser does not intend 
to surrender his money ; but the winner intends to take 
it without any equivalent in return. Gambling for 
stakes means money without work. His maxim is. 
Take care of yourself; sacrifice others. He has skill, 
patience, and effort. So has the bank robber. But it 
is not the skill of the honest and the industrious ; it is 
not the skill of the lawyer in the intricacies of law, 
nor of the artist in the manifestations of genius, nor 
of the banker in the applications of the principles of 
finance ; but it is the skill that sets at defiance the es- 
tablished laws of honorable labor. It is the develop- 
ment of a cunning to lie and cheat and rob. There 
is an honorable skill acquired and displayed in certain 
games of recreation ; but this is not the skill of equiva- 
lents. 

The underlying principles of gambling, acted upon 
sometimes where there is neither betting nor playing, 
mean gambling with capital instead of cards and 
taking the chances ; some gambling with the capital 
of others in reckless speculation. Some are too 



Rights of Property. 199 

professedly upright to touch a card or throw a dice, 
yet will risk the property of w^idows and orphans in a 
business for which their resources are unequal. It is 
an old saying : '' As the partridge sitteth on eggs, and 
hatcheth them not, so he that getteth riches ; and not by 
right, shall leave them in the midst of his days, and 
liis end shall be that of a fool." 

The highest motives impel to keep tl)e law of 
property. Nature insists upon the recognition of her 
rights. Providence is upon the side of the honest. 
Law throws its muniments of protection around the 
honorable possessions of man. Honesty leads in the 
path of personal safety. Peace of mind is the certain 
reward. The happiness of others is the benediction 
attained. The future opens its golden gates to those 
who have obeyed the inspired behest of Heaven. 



200 Supremacy of Law. 



IX. 

RIGHTS OF FAME. 

THE desire for pre-eminence has its origin in man's 
natural love of praise and dread of censure. By 
the nature God has given him man is influenced by 
motives ; he anticipates results ; he is inspired by the 
hope of success, deterred by the fear of failure. His 
desire to excel is as natural as respiration. When re- 
strained within the limits of the divine law it is as 
innocent as the desire for food or the love for parents. 
It is sinful only when it mounts to a ruling passion, 
subordinating all things for its gratification, setting 
at naught God's law and imperiling the interests of 
others. This desire is co-extensive with the being 
and the abode of man. It is apparent alike in the 
prince and the peasant, in the beggar and the king, in 
the petty merchant and the millionaire, in the domestic 
in her drudgery and in the beauty at her toilet, in the 
common soldier and in the commanding general. It 
is a power for weal and for woe. It originates in the 
great law of development to which our threefold na- 
ture has been made subject by the Creator. It is 



Rights of Fame. 201 

man's natural prerogative to rise from the undevel- 
oped condition in which nature brings liim into the 
world to the full maturity of his developed capacities. 
All else that is sublunary is stationary. Cast into the 
mold of changeless instinct the ant of to-day is not 
wiser than the ant in Solomon's time, which has not 
improved the architecture of those mansions into 
which at all times it has garnered its stores. The bee 
of this century is no more skillful than the famous 
bees of Hymettus, and has made no improvement in 
the form and beauty of its cells. The beaver of our 
times constructs his habitation on the same plan as of 
yore. The song of one bird is sweeter than the song 
of another bird, but in both it is the old song heard 
in the creation's morning. Stars diflfer in glory, but 
their magnitude remains as '' when the morning stars 
sang together and all the sons of God shouted for 

joy." 

But man is the exception to this changeless and 
otherwise universal law. The beggar may become a 
millionaire, the peasant a prince, the private soldier a 
commander of armies, the fool a philosopher, the 
sinner a saint. This desire and this capacity are 
every-where recognized. Hopes and fears are excited 
by parental injunctions, and capacity is thereby devel- 
oped. From the alphabet of the nursery to the 



202 Supremacy of Law. 

diploma of the university the same inspiration is felt 
by the young mind. Civil government offers to the 
best citizens its largest immunities and highest honors. 
In Jehovah's moral government full recognition is 
given to man's ability to ]*ise to greatness. He wooes 
us by his ]3romises and restrains us by his threaten- 
ings ; heaven invites us, hell deters us. " Do that 
which is good, and thou shalt have praise of men " is 
a venerable promise. " The Lord is with thee, thou 
mighty man of valor," was the angel's salutation to 
Gideon. " Well done, thou good and faithful serv- 
ant ; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will 
make thee ruler over many things ; enter thou into 
the joy of thy Lord," will greet the righteous at the 
last day. We are commanded to " covet the best 
gifts." The scholar may aspire to all knowledge, the 
man of business to all attainable wealth, the citizen to 
the highest stations in life, and all to the noblest 
achievements, to the widest influence, and to the most 
honorable distinctions. Such aspirations have been 
realized in the past and may be in all time to come. 

The desire for this pre-eminence is an evil when it 
is gratified in defiance of God and of human rights. 
From such a heart God is excluded ; the shrine is 
selfishness; the idol is self. When supreme this 
desire has given birth to a brood of the most devilish 



Rights of Fame. 203 

passions. Vanity begets liypocrisy ; pride, haugliti- 
ness ; jealousy, hatred ; envy, nnirder. Some men 
attain, to greatness, but it is the greatness of infamy. 
"When this desire is gratified by the sacrifice of prin- 
ciple to policy, of character for reputation, it is highly 
censurable. When men disregard the morality of the 
means for the attainment of fame, the motive merits 
the contempt of heaven and the scorn of hell. What 
crimes have not been committed for human applause ? 
Nations have been impoverished, cities consumed, 
men, women, and children slaughtered by hundreds 
of thousands, the noblest callings of life have been 
prostituted, science has been made to trumpet the 
fame of pretended friends, patriotism has been as- 
sumed to cover the betrayer of his country, the lovely 
garments of charity have been drawn around the form 
of the pretended philanthropist, the sacerdotal robes 
of the ministry have been polluted by the disguised 
hypocrite, the dearest ties of earth and the sweetest 
relations known to man have been immolated on the 
altar of an unchecked ambition. Thus impelled, 
Brutus dispatched his friend Caesar; Richard III. 
murdered his royal nephews ; Napoleon divorced his 
beautiful Josephine. 

Two things are dear to mankind — character and 
reputation. If a man has a right to life, liberty, and 



204: Supremacy of Law. 

property, he has also a right to his character, and 
every injury done thereto is an infringement of a 
natural right and a crime against society. Character 
is what a man is, in his present intellectual, social, and 
moral condition. It includes his actual acquisitions, 
his capabilities, habits, tendencies, feelings, aspirations 
— in a word, every thing that enters into his present 
being and his capabilities for attaining a better future. 
Character is the source of all our joys and sorrows, our 
hopes and fears, our beneficent and malevolent influ- 
ences exerted upon others. Character is the wealth 
of the soul, the only wealth of which some are ever 
possessed. It is the most substantial possession for this 
life and the life to come. Gold cannot purchase it. 

" It cannot be gotten for gold, neither shall silver 
be weighed for the price thereof. 

"It cannot be valued with gold of Ophir, with the 
precious onyx, or the sapphire. 

''The gold and the crystal cannot equal it; and the 
exchange of it shall not be for jewels of fine gold. 

" The topaz of Ethiopia shall not equal it, neither 
shall it be valued with pure gold. 

"No mention shall be made of coral, or of j)earls ; 
for the price of wisdom is above rubies. 

"Whence, then, cometh wisdom? And where is 
the place of understanding? 



Rights of Fame. 205 

'' God understandeth the way thereof, and he know- 
eth tlie place thereof. 

"And unto man he said, Behold the fear of the 
Lord, that is wisdom ; and to depart from evil is un- 
derstanding." 

It comes to the individual in compliance with the 
requisitions of law and by the assistance of those gra- 
cious influences which descend from heaven. Many 
a man is bad to-day, having degenerated from original 
innocence and a high state of purity, because he did 
not resist the assaults upon his personal character. 
We are not accustomed to look upon calumny in this 
regard. Usually we hold its relationship to what 
men call reputation ; but we must go deeper than that, 
and consider its influence upon the moral being of the 
individual, upon those forces which enter into life 
and out of which flow the immensities of immorality. 
Reputation may be lost and regained, but to restore 
character is the work of God. 

There may be a beautiful correlation between the 
public estimation of a citizen and what he is in all the 
depth and breadth of his being. Character and repu- 
tation should go hand in hand and present a proximity 
closer than the proposition and demonstration of a 
geometrician ; but it is too often true that a citizen 
wrongfully estimated by the public is the favorite of 



206 Supremacy of Law. 

heaven, while, on the other hand, he may be repro- 
bated by heaven and yet held in high esteem by his 
fellow-men. 

In a general sense reputation is public opinion, and 
may be good or bad, true or false. If true and good 
it is the source of wealth, honor, and happiness. To 
succeed in any of the pursuits of life the individual 
must be in repute both for capability and honor. 
The mechanic must be in repute for skill in his handi- 
craft ; known among his fellow-craftsmen as one deft 
in any given form of mechanism. The merchant 
must have a reputation for a twofold credit — that he 
can be trusted by his customers and at the same time 
that he can be trusted by those from whom he pur- 
chases. The banker must be known for his solvency 
or his depositors will no longer intrust to him their 
funds. The artist must be renowned for his skill, 
whether in marble, or bronze, or on the canvas, or in 
the production of splendid specimens of architecture. 
The statesman must be celebrated for his wisdom, 
his comprehension of the constitution and laws, his 
knowledge of political economy, his ability to grapple 
with the great questions that underlie the well-being 
of the public. The minister at the altar, the physi- 
cian at the couch, the lawyer at the bar, must be es- 
teemed for their ability in their several learned and 



Rights of Fame. 207 

honorable professions. All can readily see the finan- 
cial value of reputation. To blast that reputation is to 
rob a man, and the chief difference between a robber 
and a slanderer is that sometimes you can find the stolen 
property on the robber, but never on the slanderer. 

How much of human happiness there is in what 
we call reputation ! It is the joy of most men to be 
held in esteem by their friends and neighbors. For 
fame men have sacrified every thing. Where it is a 
ruling passion and gratified within the limitations of 
law there is something beautiful in ambition and com- 
mendable in the loftier aspirations of the soul. For 
fame the soldier rushes to battle, the scholar explores 
the whole realm of the universe, the student burns 
the midnight lamp, the merchant toils by day and 
by night, and the statesman denies himself of a thou- 
sand joys that he may render service to the public 
and thereby secure his meed of renown. How much 
there is of this noble ambition in the medical pro- 
fession, where he of the healing art goes night and 
day to the couch of the sick, to cool the fever, relieve 
the pain, and restore to health, where but few eyes 
can behold him in the exercise of his marvelous skill, 
in that wonderful touch of science which brings back 
health, and snatches life, as it were, from the clutches 
of the grave ! In the legal profession no one rises to 



208 Supremacy of Law. 

greatness who is not self-abnegating, that he may at 
least stand pre-eminent in his noble calling. There is 
happiness in the realization of the commendation of 
others. All men sigh for recognition. It is born 
with our birth ; it grows with our years. 

If these are acceptable facts, confirmed by our ex- 
perience and observation and recognized by law, hu- 
man and divine, then what anathema is too terrible to 
pronounce upon him wlio deliberately ruins the fair 
fame of another, or what punishment is too great to 
decree against him ? How despicable the man who, 
whether for wealth, position, or glory, seeks to rise 
upon the ruins of another, whose prospects he has 
lighted, whose peace he has ruined, whose fame he 
has tarnished ! Ah ! at the last day will not the 
Judge of all the earth press to the lips of that man 
the cup of trembling to its bitterest dregs, and will 
not his coronation be upon the summit of torments 
and the last arrow in the quiver of divine justice 
penetrate his infamous soul ? What terms of con- 
demnation are equal to express our indignation at 
the course pursued by journalists and orators, in polit- 
ical campaigns, toward their opponents ? What a 
school of scandal for American youth as ordinarily 
conducted ! It would be a compensation to private 
virtue and public morality if, during such a time. 



Rights of Fame. 209 

political papers were excluded from the family, and if 
every good citizen should decline to listen to defama- 
tory orators. Were defamation to become a universal 
custom what a blow it would be to the very foundations 
of society! What would become of families, of 
friendships, of communities, if every failing should 
be proclaimed upon the house-top ? 

What are the compensations to men who gain pre- 
eminence by such despicable means? They may 
attain to glory. They may be embalmed in song, 
recorded in history, eulogized in panegyrics, applaud- 
ed by admiring multitudes ; nay, more, they may be 
sculptured in marble, cast in bronze, painted on can- 
vas ; nay, more, they may be interred in some splen- 
did mausoleum and their memory perpetuated by 
monumental shafts. All this is bewitching ; but let 
us behold the troubled life of him who has thus at- 
tained to honor. What disquietude of soul; what 
sensitiveness to every report ; what anxiety is excited 
by every change of public sentiment ; what servility 
of soul to the great, what hypocritical smiles to con- 
stituents, what self-degradation before mankind ! 
Let us inquire the value of fame's golden bubble ; 
let us ask the angels, "who kept not their first es- 
tate ; " let us ask Adam, who would be as wise as 

Crod ; let us evoke from their earthquake graves 
14 



210 Supremacy of Law. 

Korali, Dathan, Abiram, whose ambition kindled Je- 
hovah's wrath ; let us bid to our presence the leprous 
Miriam, who conspired against the authority of 
Moses, her brother ; let us go to the groves of 
Ephraim and look upon the ambitious Absalom 
suspended by the hair of his head in the branches of 
the trees ; let us ask Pilate what he gained by sacri- 
ficing Christ to become Caesar's friend ; let us go to 
the venerable abbey of Leicester and hear Wolsey's 
dying lament : 

"Had I but served my God with half the zeal 
I served my king:, he would not in mine age 
Have left me naked to mine enemies." 

Whether defamation is by tongue or pen, it is for- 
bidden by the organic law that flashed its authority 
amid the thunders of Mount Sinai. All evil-speaking 
may not be slander. It is proper, when the ends of 
justice are to be subserved, to bear testimony against 
crimes, for he who conceals a crime renders himself 
party to the offense. It is within reason to give 
publicity to the faults of others in self-defense, as 
when an innocent person is wrongfully accused and 
the guilty party is not suspected. At all times the 
innocent man has a right to vindicate himself. It is 
not evil-speaking to caution the innocent against the 
wiles and wicked intentions of the bad. It is both 



Eights of Fame. 211 

justice and charity ; it is " doing as we would be 
done by." Is'or is violence done to law and justice 
when allusion is made to the evil acts of another, 
when such have been made known either by the of- 
fender himself or by the providence of God. Yet 
such allusions should be tempered with pity and 
discretion, and not made with hatred and pleasure. 
There are some actions which carry villainy on their 
very face — as murder, or the desertion of a family, or 
the brazen effrontery of falsehood — to speak against 
which there is no law. Nor is the divine command 
infringed when, in all kindness and prudence, the 
errors of another are reproved. Nor is it an offense 
against propriety or good morals when the minister 
of religion denounces the sins of others, as when 
John the Baptist said to Herod, " It is not lawful for 
thee to have her," or as when Christ denounced the 
hypocrisies of the Jewish rulers. 

But this liberty of speech is carried to excess and 
is abused when general conclusions are drawn from a 
single evil act. No one act is the fair exponent of 
any man's character. A single illiberal act does not 
prove a man covetous any more than one act of char- 
ity proves him to be beneficent. The final judgment 
is to be the expression of the tenor of a man's life ; 
the reason for the good or bad within him is with 



212 Supremacy of Law. 

himself. He may possess a whole class of virtues 
and of vices, yet men proceed in their generalization 
and deny the possession of any virtue or the exist- 
ence of any vice. 

In the treatment of human actions what a world of 
difference there is between candor and calumny! When 
a man relieves a beggar in the streets candor would 
ascribe it to a generous emotion, but calumny to 
vanity of ostentation. When a man stops short in a 
career of prosperity and resigns himself to the mercy . 
of his creditors candor pleads the cruelty of misfortune, 
but calumny whispers of midnight excesses, habitual 
licentiousness, extravagant dissipations. When, from 
the family altar, we hear the music of domestic de- 
votion candor loves to dwell with delight upon the 
spirit of venerable piety, but calumny points to the 
mask of hypocrisy. When a citizen is prosecuting 
the claims of justice candor accords to him the purity 
of upright and honorable intention, but calumny as- 
serts it is the grip of avarice or the insolence of 
oppression. Where candor hesitates calumny assumes 
the tone of authority. When the former demands 
investigation and proof the latter gives confident 
decisions. Candor suspends judgment for more 
light; calumny draws conclusions and thunders invec- 
tives. When candor is for checkino; the malicious 



Rights of Fame. 213 

report calumny opens its brazen throat and gives to 
it publicity, calling upon the wings of the wind to 
spread it abroad. Candor demands hesitation at two 
points, when the merit of an action is disguised by 
the uncertainty of evidence and the ambiguity of its 
complexion — when the accused has the right to the 
benefit of the doubt. And candor hesitates in assign- 
ing a motive for actions, for motives are hid by the 
veil of the impenetrable secrecy of- the heart, unseen 
by any save Omniscience ; written on no book save 
the record of judgment ; remain untold till the awful 
day when the universe shall hear. 

Candor never insinuates. " Charity thinketh no 
evil." Half-truths and false truths are slanders. A 
half-truth is one side of a question, and may be the 
bad side. Facts are false when out of their logical 
and historical connection. Facts should balance each 
other and should be expressive of the whole truth and 
nothing but the truth. Some natures are too deep to 
be understood. Some natures are transparent, some 
translucent, some opaque. There are tfiose so consti- 
tuted that they cannot manifest themselves, and so go 
through the world misunderstood and misrepresented. 
Many a man is unknown beyond the circle of his 
family and immediate friends. There is many a 
hidden flower beautiful as if kissed by an angel ; 



214 Supremacy of Law. 

there are philanthropists in the homes of distress 
whose names the silver trumpets of fame have never 
proclaimed. " I thought him cold and hard, and 
grasping," is the self-condemnatory expression when 
the better soul of the "unknown has been revealed to 
us. Some such become our warmest friends and fill 
us with admiration. 

Chief among the sources of slander is malice. 
There are those who so far descend below the ordi- 
nary limits of depravity as to experience delight in 
traducing another ; who seem to feast on the melan- 
choly picture of another's guilt ; whose ears are only 
open to the tale of detraction and whose lips to tra- ' 
duce and vilify. Language has no terms of moral 
indignation capable of branding with adequate in- 
famy conduct so intensel}^ vicious. There are those 
who delight in detraction. In this poor world of ours 
there is more satire and censure than praise and pan- 
egyric, more invective than commendation, and a 
sweeter delight is experienced in bitter denunciation 
than in highest applause. A man succeeds in busi- 
ness, in art, in science, in war, in professional life, 
and when his success is beyond question some de- 
tracting reason is assigned for liis success. Nobler 
impulses would ascribe that success to genius. I 
wish I could portray the hideous creature who thrives 



Eights of Fame. 215 

on the carrion of detraction, dissect liis heart, turn 
his soul inside out, and then give him the burial of 
an ass. Tliose who may not be charged with malice, 
but who revel in self-gratification, indulge their pas- 
sions, increase their power, feed their vanity by 
rendering another degraded forever. Will not the 
Judge of all the earth, when he comes to make in- 
quisition for blood, be unto such a " consuming fire ? " 
How despicable is he who, whether for wealth, posi- 
tion, or glory, seeks to rise upon the ruins of another 
whom he has destroyed ! . What monument of shame 
shall mark the resting-place of his dust, and what 
philippic shall transmit to posterity the meanness of 
his spirit and the contempt of his life ? 

It is amazing beyond conception to observe with 
what freedom the honorable reputation of another is 
treated, as if that reputation was, 

''As yon neglected shrub, at random cast, 

That shades the steep, and sighs at every blast." 

It is treated as the merest bubble, to be exploded at 
any moment, or as a passing cloud, to be dissolved at 
pleasure, or as the fragile flower, to be trampled in 
the dust. What right have men to dally with this 
sacred thing, dearest to the heart's best memories, the 
most precious jewel of the soul ? Men claim to be the 
censors of one another, to sit in judgment upon their 



216 Supremacy of Law. 

fellow-men, and to deal out tlieir opinions without 
asking permission, as if the Almighty had delegated 
to them authority and clothed them with omniscience 
to know and omnipotence to do. There is nothing that 
demands a severer repression on the part of the 
virtuous and honorable than this freedom to meddle 
with the characters and reputations of others. It is 
lamentable that in all departments of life the idea 
is prevalent that the surest path to success is to defame 
a rival. But such success is temporary. Eternal 
ages belong to the good man for the vindication of 
his honorable name. It is a glorious truth that the 
whole tenor of Christian morality is a sanction of this 
law of fame. Words of defamation are not only 
condemned, but a restraint is placed upon the lips of 
the good. 

" Speak evil of no man." 
" Keep not company with the railers." 
'' Revilers shall not inherit the kingdom of God." 
" Who shall dwell in thy holy hill ? He that back- 
bitetli not with his tongue, nor taketh up a reproach 
against his neighbor." 

" If any man offend not in word, the same is a per- 
fect man." 

Immortality is the heritage of the good. Shakes- 
peare makes Mark Anthony falsify history when. 



Eights of Fajvie. 217 

standing by the murdered body of Caesar, he 
exclaims : 

" The evil that men do lives after them, 
The good is oft interred with their bones." 

Rather, the good shall survive, for the eternal ages of 
God belong to truth. The truly good are the truly 
great. Who is esteemed the prince of gentlemen: 
Lord Chesterfield, with his horrid letters of advice to 
his son? Rather Sir Philip Sidney, whose last words 
were : " I would not exchange my joy for an empire." 
Who stands at the head of our English classics : Gib- 
bon, the historian, with his splendid genius prostituted 
to assail Christianity ? Rather Addison, whose dying 
words were to Lord Warwick : " Come, my lord, and 
see how a Christian dies." And of all the warriors 
of ancient and modern times who is cherished most 
tenderly by mankind : Hannibal, Caesar, Marlborough ? 
Rather Washington, whose throne is in the hearts of 
his countrymen. It is true there are some who go down 
to their graves unwept, unsung, unmonumented, but 
when the angel of justice shall call to judgment there 
shall be a reversion of the verdicts of history, and 
those who died under a cloud will shine forth with the 
brightness of the morning. 

And what an abuse of the holy mission of language 
is the violation of this divine law of fame. 



218 Supremacy of Law. 

" Words are mighty, words are living; 
Serpents, with their venomous stings, 
Or bright angels crowding round us 
With lieaven's light upon their wings ; 
Ev'ry word has its own spirit, 
True or false, that never dies ; 
Ev'ry word man's lips have uttered 
Echoes in God's holy skies." 

It is a law of our being that tlie words we utter 
excite in others corresponding emotions. Familiarity 
with wrong diminishes our abhorrence thereof. Speak 
an unkind word against a man, and it will open a 
fountain of hatred against you ; speak kindly of an 
enemy, and his enmity is slain ; insult a man, and he 
will insult you ; swear at a man, and he will swear in 
return ; defame a man, and you tempt him to defame 
you. And who has considered the blighting effect 
upon the victim of slander ? All men are born to 
feel the salutary control of public opinion. The most 
independent of men are not insensible to its charms. 
What tlien must be the sufferings of those whose fair 
fame has been blighted ! The world may not behold 
the misery caused ; the victim may pine away in 
secret and die broken-hearted, while those nearest and 
dearest to him must wear the weeds of disappoint- 
ment '^ and the mourners go about the streets." 

" A frivolous word, a sharp retort, 
A flash from a passing cloud, 



Eights of Fame. 219 

Two hearts, scathed to their inmost core, 
Are ashes and dust f orevermore : 
Two faces turn to the crowd, 
Masked by pride with a Hfe-long He, 
To hide the scars of that agony. 

" A frivolous word, a sharp retort, 

An arrow at random sped: 

It has cut in twain the mystic tie 

That had bound two souls in harmony, 

Sweet love lies bleeding or dead. 

A poisoned shaft with scarce an aim, 

Hath done a mischief sad as shame.'* 

Language was given for a nobler purpose. It is 
among the noblest gifts of God to man. What hon- 
orable sentiments it is capable of conveying to the 
human mind ! It is God's chosen medium of truth. 
How glorious the eulogiums pronounced thereon by 
the great thinkers of our race : 

" Truth against the world." — Tennyson. 

''Were God to make himself visible to men lie 
would take light for his body and truth for his soul." 
— Pythagoras, 

" Truth is God's daughter."— PZa?^^. 

" Let me die in Africa, but let my words stand." — 
Regulus. 

"I am the truth."- — Christ. 

How sweet are the lips of truth : 

" The lips of knowledge are a precious jewel." 



220 Supremacy of Law. 

'' The opening of my lips shall be right things." 
" I will take heed to my ways, that 1 sin not with 

my tongue." 

" In all this did not Job sin with his lips." 

" Let no evil communication proceed out of your 

mouth." 

" Let your speech be always seasoned with grace." 
" Let the words of my mouth be acceptable in thy 

sight, O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer." 



Law of Purity. 221 



X. 

LAW^ OF PUKITY. 

THE last of the Ten Commandments is the most 
important ; it relates to the heart, out of which 
are the " issues of life." It is a law that cannot be 
broken by any word that man may speak, by any act 
that he may perform. It is descriptive of character, 
and supposes a moral state out of which flow all mo- 
tives, desires, thoughts, words, and deeds. 

All the other commandments are violated by an act 
or a word ; but the tenth is supremely mental in its 
scope and purpose. While other precepts have a 
mental basis, and their overt acts derive their moral 
character from the intent of the heart, yet all overt 
acts are not criminal : there may be justifiable homi- 
cide ; there may be honorable labor of man or beast 
on the Sabbath day ; there may be commendable diso- 
bedience to parents — as when the child decides to 
^'obey God rather than man." 

In this last of the divine ten precepts is the law of 
desire. To covet is to desire the '^ forbidden fruit." 
It is not external, but internal ; it relates to what a 



222 Supremacy of Law. 

man thinks and feels. A desire is a conception, a 
wish, an inclination, an aspiration, which may or may 
not lead on to action. The penalty is not stated. 
Will it not be exclusion from God ? The great thonght 
is desire within the limitations of law. Covetousness 
is an eager and immoderate desire for that which is 
not lawful for a man to have. This was the sin of 
Aclian : " "When I saw among the spoils a goodly 
Babylonish garment, and two hundred shekels of sil- 
ver, and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels weight, then 
I coveted them." 

There is a pleasurable, beneficent, lawful exercise 
of desire. Tliere is a covetousness that is right and 
commendable. We are commanded to " covet ear- 
nestly the best gifts," and to " covet to prophesy " — 
that is, to teach the way of the Lord. Intense desire 
is indispensable to success. What were life without 
aspiration ? Desire nerves the soul, stimulates tlie in- 
tellect, animates the mind. The Master said : " With 
desire I have desired to eat this passover with you 
before I suffer." St. Paul says : " I have a desire to 
depart and be with Christ." Men may aspire to all 
knowledge, to the largest wealth, to the highest honors, 
to the greatest achievements, to the widest influence, to 
boundless usefulness, to all attainable purity ; but God 
must be supreme ; principle the rule ; charity the end. 



Law of Purity. 223 

A man may desire a wife, but not another's; a 
horse, but not his neighbor's ; a trusty servant, but 
not to the disadvantage of an employer ; an ox, an 
ass, a field, but not to the injury of its owner. 

How execrable the man who lessens the esteem of a 
husband for the woman he has wedded and then ingra- 
tiates himself in the aflfections of that alienated wife 
that he may have her ! For his rebuke to such a 
wretch the Baptist lost his head, but the angel of his- 
tory crowns the martyr with glory and transfixes 
upon the summit of torments the " Herod who cov- 
eted and took his brother Philip's wife." The long- 
ing eyes of the covetous may rest upon the possessions 
of some honest Nabotli and by force or unjust manip- 
ulations may possess them, but in the terrible reversion 
of the verdicts of history Naboth may be esteemed 
worthy of a kingdom. Ahab won a vineyard but 
lost a throne. 

The imagination is the domain wherein the law of 
purity operates, and therein should hold supreme 
sway. 'No other mental faculty is so potent in the 
formation of the character and in giving direction to 
the destiny of men and nations. The iniagination 
rules the world for good and evil. The sacred writers 
couple the imagination with the heart, which is 
neither accidental nor incidental, but is done with 



224: Supremacy of Law. 

intelligent intent. It is to remind ns of the immense 
power of this masterful faculty over the great 
passions of our nature. In all the universe there is 
nothing more powerful than the human heart ; it 
sways the will, sways the conscience, sways the 
affections, sways the appetites, sways the passions, 
sways the character, sways destiny, sways the throne 
of God. It is a metonymy — another word for the 
imagination ; expressive of thought in embryo, the 
material of which ideas and desires are formed, as 
when " God saw that every imagination of the 
thoughts of man's heart was only evil continually." 
It is the realm of self-delusion, as when one of old 
said, "I shall have peace, though I walk in the 
imagination of mine heart, to add drunkenness to 
thirst ; " and as when Mary sang, " He hath scattered 
the proud in the imagination of their hearts." It is 
the birthplace and nursery of vice and crime ; so said 
the Master : " Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, 
murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, 
blasphemies; these are the things which defile the 
man." 

To capture, control, purify, refine, elevate this 
dominating power of the soul is the mission of the 
law of purity : " Casting down imaginations, and 
•every high thing that exalted itself against the knowl- 



Law of Purity. 225 

edge of God, and bringing into captivity every 
tliought to the obedience of Christ." How beneficent 
is the imagination when subject to law ; how malev- 
olent its influence when unrestrained and lawless ! 
What imaginary storms sweep over the soul, what 
battles we fight with fancied foes, what miseries we 
endure and ills we suffer that are the merest dreams 
of the mind ! But when purified and ennobled the 
imagination is the good angel of our mental nature, 
suggesting the possible of all knowledge to the 
scholar, of all justice to the statesman, of all happiness 
to the philanthropist, of all conquest to the Christian, 
of all heaven to the dying saint. 

Like the reason and the memory, the imagination 
is subject to discipline and the sovereign will of man. 
Evil thoughts may be projected by satanic infiuence 
or by external circumstances, but such suggestions 
are not a man's thoughts ; they come unbidden and 
are unwelcome, like the breath of pestilence. The 
mind is its own master, and thoughts may remain or 
be dismissed at will. Instantaneous prayer brings 
instantaneous relief. " As a man thinketh in his 
heart, so is he." We are not to carry havoc into the 
empire of mind under the plea that evil thoughts are 
a hidden pastime, and, like the poison of the suicide, 

are limited to the one who indulges therein ; for such 
15 



226 Supremacy of Law. 

forget the venerable saying: " Out of the fullness of 
the heart the mouth speaketh." We may people the 
imagination with forms of beauty whose entrancing 
loveliness will attract the angels to this fair banquet 
of the soul, whence the perfume of purity shall 
ascend to heaven and the songs of the blissful shall 
salute the harpers of the skies. 

This law of purity demands a passive state and an 
active manifestation. Christianity is the religion of 
the imagination. Christ is the only religious teacher 
known to man who demands of his people a moral 
condition antecedent to act of devotion. He goes 
behind the act, behind the motive, behind the thought, 
and takes cognizance of that moral state out of which 
all these spring as the effect of a persistent cause. 
His doctrine is that what we think and feel and do 
are expressions of character which lie deeper than the 
will, deeper than the affections, deeper than the 
conscience ; that this character is man in his modes of 
thought, in his emotional transitions, in the trend of 
his passional being ; that this character is the sum of 
what a man is in all his appetites, passions, tenden- 
cies ; and that out of this character issue man's 
totality and finality. If God is not a respecter of 
persons he is of character, and that he has fore- 
ordained unto eternal life. Christ's demand for 



Law of Purity. 227 

a moral condition antecedent to all mental and physical 
action is in harmony with the order of nature. There 
is a passive state of our muscular forces and intellectual 
powers upon which the active depends, and of which 
the active is the living expression. If the arm is 
strong to defend, there must be healthfulness in the 
muscles thereof. If the faculties of the mind respond 
to the will, there must be latent vigor in the intellect. 
Man's moral nature is both passive and active, and 
experience is in proof that as is the passive so is the 
active. If the aJffections respond only to objects of 
purity, if the conscience only to the voice of right, if 
the will only to the call of duty, there must be inherent 
purity and strength in all our moral powers when 
quiescent ; this is the glorious significance of our 
Lord's words, "The prince of this world cometh, and 
he hath nothing in me "—nothing in my nature or 
spirit, nothing in my thoughts or motives, nothing in 
my desires or purposes, nothing in my appetites or 
passions, nothing in my words or deeds ; for, underlying 
all these, is my state of purity. Christ is the Saviour 
and Sovereign of the heart wherein he incarnates 
purity. 

He must be at the fountain-head of life that the 
issues thereof may be divine. This is the high import 
of his Sermon on the Mount, when he opened his 



228 Supremacy of Law. 

mouth and taught the people, saying, " Blessed are the 
pure in heart," implying an antecedent state of purity. 
He consents that the law is founded on the eternal 
distinctions of right and wrong, including in their 
essence every vice and virtue known to our race, 
commanding what ought to be done and forbidding 
what ought not to be done. He commands the ex- 
ternal observance of the Ten Commandments, but he 
searches, as with the candle of the Lord, for the 
secrets of the heart. Hence, he pronounces him a 
murderer who hates his brother ; an adulterer whose 
look is lascivious ; a perjurer where oath is unneces- 
sary. And, therefore, he demands that self-abnegation 
shall take the place of equivalent revenge ; that love 
shall span both friend and foe ; that charity shall 
serve in modest secrecy ; that prayer shall be offered 
in holy solitude ; that fasting shall be a private self- 
denial ; and all this to fulfill the command, " Ye 
therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is 
perfect." 

In this higher and better sense purity is the re- 
adjustment of our whole nature, whereby the inferior 
appetites and propensities are subordinated and the 
superior intellectual and moral powers are restored to 
their supremacy and Christ reigns in a completely 
renewed soul : " That ye put on the new man, which 



Law of Purity. 229 

after God is created in righteousness and true holiness." 
In man's original estate the superior faculties were 
commanding because of his normal condition. He 
was pure, inasmuch as heavenly order reigned througli- 
out liis being. Two effects followed the first trans- 
gression — a criminal act and a subjective change. 
When man consented to sin God withdrew the fellow- 
ship of his presence. In the darkness of the conscious 
guilt that followed the soul became confused, and in 
that confusion the inferior propensities usurped the 
mastery over the superior powers ; sense became su- 
preme and with a mad sway held reason and conscience 
in subjection. This is the unnatural state of man. 
This is the condition of a fallen soul, transmitted from 
parent to child. The history of the world, the lives 
of men eminent for intellect and iniquity, and our own 
experience sadly prove that the wickedness and the 
wretchedness of humanity are the dominance of the 
animal in man, swaying reason and disregarding con- 
science. " The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, 
and the pride of life is not of the Father, but is of the 
world." Hence St. Paul's meaning, " For I keep un- 
der my body, and bring it into subjection." This 
subjection is not self-destruction, nor the eradication 
of some annoying passion, nor the brutal humiliation 
of the body, as sometimes practiced by monks and 



230 Supremacy of Law. 

f akirs, but rather the subordination of the same to law. 
All the appetites of the body, all the passions of the 
mind, have their origin in the order and constitution 
of nature, and are designed for the happiness of man. 
A mastering propensity is a perversion. That which 
is innocent witliin the limitations of law is vicious 
when the gratification is unlawful. Gluttony is the 
excess of temperance ; adultery of the lawful rights of 
marriage ; revenge of anger ; pride of self-respect ; 
vanity of a decent regard for the good opinion of 
mankind. The perfect man in Christ is he Avhose 
I^hysical, mental, and moral powers are in full force, 
but subject to law. In this completed restoration 
nothing but sin is destroyed. All that is natural is 
regulated, purified, exalted. To such God re-appears 
in the fellowship of his presence ; conscience is 
strengthened and its dictates are obeyed. The affec- 
tions are cleansed and enshrine the lioly One. The 
will is emancipated and responds to the divine law. 
All passions find their contentment in normal indul- 
gence. All desires have their appropriate gratifica- 
tion. All temptations are met with instant recoil. 
The equipoise of the soul is restored. Love is su- 
preme. Rest is perfect. " Christ is all and in all." 

Out of such a condition flows a life " pure, guile- 
less, and undefiled ; " for purity is an act. It is perfect 



Law of Purity. 231 

obedience in love to a law that is '' holy and just and 
good." It is more than devotion. It is holy living. 
It is the spirit of devoutness carried into all the rela- 
tions and concerns of life. It is self-abnegation 
which seeks no other reward than the consciousness 
of duty done. It is calmness amid turbulence, meek- 
ness amid provocation, humility amid the pride and 
fashion of life. It is the reign of love amid the an- 
archy of this world's hate. It is the charity that 
thinketh no evil. It is a brotherly kindness that 
worketh no ill to man. It is benevolence incarnated. 
It is a horizon which takes in the whole of each day, 
so that conversation is pure as the breath of prayer, 
laughter as holy as a psalm of praise, the pursuit of 
wealth, pleasure, honor saintly as the eucharistic feast. 
Such a life is beautiful with " whatsoever things are 
true, whatsoever things are honorable, whatsoever 
things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatso- 
ever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good 
report." In such a life the Sabbath of the soul never 
ends. 

But is not such a state rather a lofty ideal to 
awaken holier aspirations never to be realized, a goal 
of renown to excite heroic struggles never to be tri- 
umphant, than one of the grand possibilities of Chris- 
tian faith ? God never commands what he does not 



232 Supremacy of Law. 

require. He never requires where there is not abil- 
ity to perforin. He is ever consistent with himself. 
Through all the ages, under all dispensations, he has 
made requisition for this one thing. He foreshad- 
owed his will in the shoeless feet of Moses on the 
mount, in the spotless garments of the priests in the 
sanctuary, in the blemishless sacrifices on the altar of 
atonement, and, transcending all these in glory, in the 
sinless life of his Son. This requirement rests upon a 
necessity, and the necessity rises to a privilege. Privi- 
lege is the correlate of duty. Where there is a wing 
there is air; where there is a fin there is water; 
where there is an eye there is light ; so where there is 
a demand there is grace to comply. God cannot de- 
mand less ; he does not require more. As worship is 
companionship there is a manifest fitness in this or- 
dination. If a soldier should be brave, a teacher 
learned, a friend true, man should be pure. 

It is the belief of the Christian Church that Christ 
is a Saviour; that his mission was twofold — object- 
ively, to re-adjust our relations with the divine govern- 
ment so that God could be "just and the justifier of 
him who believeth in Jesus," and subjectively to re- 
create us in his own image. But by a laxity of faith 
this re-creation is held to be but partial at most. Nev- 
ertheless he is esteemed a Saviour from some depravity, 



Law of Purity. 233 

from some besetting sin, from some downward 
tendency ; that lie so renews lis that the outline of 
his image is seen, and that he imparts to lis some 
love, some hope, some faith. This is the comfortable 
profession of the catholic Church of Jesus Christ ; 
but it is not sufficient. It is an inception without a 
consummation. Either it is not his plan to complete 
the work prior to death, or he has not the ability, or 
the believer does not exercise the faith equal to the 
end. Accepting the latter as the underlying cause 
of the deficiency in the common experience of the 
Church, let a nobler faith measure the possibility of 
his power and find in Christ one who saveth to the 
uttermost. Scripture and experience are in accord 
that man may be holy and live. The exhortation is : 
'* Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved^ 
let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh 
and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God."^ 
Over against this apostolic injunction let us place one 
declarative promise which shall be the measure of his 
ability and of our privilege. " If we walk in the light 
as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with, 
another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleans- 
eth us from all sin." This is more than pardon of 
actual transgression ; more than the subjugation of 
inherited depravity ; more than deliverance from the 



234 Supremacy of Law. 

dominion of sin. It is the completion of regenera- 
tion ; it is entire sanctification. 

But this exalted state of grace is not immunity 
from tlie infirmities incident to an imperfect body, 
or from the mistakes inevitable to a weak understand- 
ing, or from the liability to sin, or from the necessity 
and possibility of growth in grace. Structural im- 
perfections, disease, and death, imply man's fall, and 
because of which he cannot respond fully to that 
primal law under which he was created a perfect 
being. These are defects not to be remedied by en- 
tire sanctification, but by the resurrection of the just : 
^' He knoweth our frame ; he remembereth that we 
are dust." Yet to the^ pure is given the grace of 
patience and resignation to endure the ills of a body 
which is the temple of the Holy Ghost ; and it is a 
fact that by the sobriety it demands, by the restful- 
ness it imparts, by the joy it creates, purity tends to 
health and length of days — "With long life will I 
satisfy him and show him my salvation." Nor is this 
entire consecration to Christ inconsistent with the 
possible errors which arise from an enfeebled intel- 
lect or from limited knowledge. Such may not be 
inseparable from the purest intention and the holiest 
life ; yet liability to such will be largely diminished 
by the presence of an informing and guiding spirit. 



Law of Purity. 235 

And it is a matter of experience that with purity 
there comes an intellectual elevation, a sharpening 
and quickening of all the mental powers, whereby the 
" perfect man in Christ " discerns more readily be- 
tween right and wrong ; and the heavenly calm that 
reigns in all his being, and the '' perfect peace " 
wherein he is ever kept, conduce to tranquillity of in- 
tellect, correctness of taste, candor of intention, care- 
fulness of judgment, and impartiality of decision. 
Perfect knowledge and perfect love may be separa- 
hle, yet in this higher state of grace even the thought- 
life of the soul is subject to the sway of the Lord, 
" Bringing into captivity every thought to the obedi- 
ence of Christ." What thought is we may not de- 
fine ; how thoughts originate we may not explain ; 
but whether thoughts come from original perceptions, 
or from the combined action of the memory and the 
imagination, or are projected by satanic influence, the 
mind may be master of itself, and evil thoughts may 
become our possessions by retention or be dismissed 
at will. Thought is a mental act, and, like the " idle 
word," or the " deeds done in the body," has a moral 
character. " Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts." 

The imagination acts directly on the moral character, 
and by its abuse the will is weakened, the mental en- 
ergy is dissipated, and the whole life is polluted. 



236 SUPKEMACY OF LaW. 

Hence the prayer of the Church : " Cleanse the 
thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy 
Spirit, tliat we may perfectly love thee and worthily 
magnify thy holy name." Nor is tliere any warrant 
in Scripture or any proof in experience that purity is 
freedom from temptation or liability to sin. Temp- 
tation is the appointed test of virtue, and liability to 
sin belongs to probation. The tendencies to sin may 
be arrested and will diminish as the believer abides in 
Christ ; but the terrible struggles against the tempter 
will continue to the dying hour. Many will be the 
fierce conflicts, and in unguarded moments and under 
powerful Satanic influence there may be a blind im- 
pulse to yield to some attractive object of solicitation ; 
but the pure spirit will recoil therefrom as from the 
presence of pestilence. All solicitations to disobedi- 
ence are harmless till the soul is conscious of a dis- 
position to comply therewith. In the heat of the 
desperate strife the mind may realize intense excite- 
ment ; but where there is no surrender the tempter is 
never hurtful. Of the Saviour it is said, " Who was 
in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin." 
" Nay, in all these things we are more than conquer- 
ors through him that loved us ; " and it is no part of 
our belief in the doctrine of " Christian purity " that 
growth in grace is not a duty and a possibility. There 



Law of Pukity. 237 

may be an end of conscious sinning and impurity, but 
under tlie law of spiritual development the heavenly 
virtues expand forever. The maturity of the graces 
possessed is that of exclusion of their opposite vices. 
Beyond that there is an infinite hereafter. There is 
no height of purity beyond which a redeemed spirit 
may not attain a higher ascension. Heaven will be 
an eternal approach to God. 

Purity and happiness are inseparable. In nothing 
more is tlie beneficence of the Creator apparent than 
in his ordination that happiness here and liereafter 
shall flow out of the character of a man. The bless- 
ings of human life, such as honorable birth, liberal 
education, ample fortune, high social position, renown 
among men, abundance of health, and length of days, 
may contribute to the repose of soul and add to the 
joy of life ; but these can never be the radical source 
of happiness. The whole history of the w^orld is in 
proof that happiness never flows into a man, but 
rather flows out of him. This was the true and lofty 
conception of Jesus which he had in that sublime ad- 
umbration : '' The water that I shall give him shall be 
in him a well of water springing up into everlasting 
life." He is the most illustrious example that the 
resources of human happiness should be within a man. 
This is the significance of these remarkable words, 



238 Supremacy of Law. 

" I have meat to eat that ye know not of." While 
the foxes had holes and the birds of the air had nests, 
and he nowhere to lay his head, the profound purity 
of his character lifted him to a communion with his 
Father Almighty, out of which flowed that repose 
the world could never disturb and that blissfulness 
of the consciousness of duty done which was the peren- 
nial joy of his infinite soul. This is the key to the 
bold contrasts every-where apparent in history. 
Daniel, the captive, is happier than Belshazzar, the 
king ; Paul, the prisoner, than Agrippa, the judge ; 
Lazarus, the beggar, than Dives, the millionaire. The 
significance of that wonderful epic, *'The book of 
Job," is that purity of soul is the primal and supreme 
source of unalloyed joy. What a subject for the pen- 
cil of some Apelles ! Behold the illustrious sufferer 
of the Land of Uz sitting amid the ashes of sorrow, 
with a potsherd in his hand to relieve himself of the 
itching sensations of the black leprosy wherewith he 
was smitten, bereft of fortune, honor, health, children, 
and friends, and tempted by his wife to suicide — '' Dost 
thou still retain thine integrity ? curse God and die." 
But in that supreme moment came the triumph of his 
soul, and, conscious of his innate purity, he found com- 
fort and victory in those immortal utterances : " All 
the days of my appointed time will I wait till 



Law of Purity. 239 

my change come ; " for " I know that my Redeemer 
Hveth." 

And what is true of earth will be true of heaven. 
Such was the conception of the psalmist, who sings, 
" I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness." 
Doubtless heaven will be a blissful abode and the 
place of exalted society, but the essence of the 
heavenly happiness will not be in rosy skies, or crys- 
talline fountains, or golden streets, or Shiloh's river, 
or ambrosial fruits, or amaranthine flowers, or the 
presence of angels, or the company of loved ones, but 
in that transformation of character which shall bear 
the image of the Infinite, out of which shall spring 
communion with God and the perpetual heaven of 
the soul. " Blessed are the pure in heart : for they 
shall see God." 



THE END. 



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